THE  ODYSSEY 

OF  A 

TORPEDOED 
TRANSPORT 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED 
TRANSPORT 


THE  ODYSSEY 

OF  A 

TORPEDOED 
TRANSPORT 

By 

Translated  from  the  French  by 
Grace  Fallow  Norton 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  PAYOT  &  CIE. 
COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  June  iqi8 


I  9/8 
PREFACE 

There  seems  to  be  no  information  concerning  the 
author  of  these  letters  save  that  contained  in  the 
letters  themselves.  They  reached  the  Revue  de  Paris 
through  the  friend  to  whom  they  were  addressed. 
Their  serial  publication  was  interrupted  by  the 
censor,  but  resumed  again  after  several  months.  It 
is  evident  that  the  idea  of  publication  never  once 
entered  the  author's  head.  He  was  not  "literary." 

But  he  had  a  great  relish  for  life,  a  fresh,  huge 
appetite  for  the  daily  doings  of  the  winch,  the  hori- 
zontal shaft,  and  the  weather;  and  a  positive  pas- 
sion for  human  nature  —  for  his  crew,  his  Hindus, 
for  what  the  "big  vegetable"  said  and  what  the 
little  lady  did,  for  what  Plantat,  Flannigan,  and 
Mousseaux  thought,  for  Villiers,  with  his  unanswer- 
able arguments  and  his  multicolored  lingerie,  and 
above  all,  for  the  pasha  —  Fourgues.  Y.  was  im- 
pelled to  write  of  all  these  things,  partly  for  the 
pleasure  of  living  every  detail  over  again  and  partly 
in  order  to  sense  fully  his  captain,  who  was  so  im- 
portant to  him,  whom  he  enjoyed  so  much  and  whom 
he  saw  so  clearly.  For  Y.,  in  the  process  of  be- 
coming a  man,  felt  Fourgues  to  be  a  real  one  and 
was  reaching  for  Fourgues'  qualities.  Some  way  or 
other  he  imparts  his  relish  and  his  admiration  to 


^  tr*  v~  jta  ,*  r% 


PREFACE 

those  who  come  to  his  artless  pages.  He  imparts 
his  amusement,  his  heartache,  his  sense  of  his  fate, 
his  struggle  with  his  pride.  For  he  sincerely  longed 
to  count.  He  never  questions  the  cause  of  France. 
That  is  beyond  discussion,  though  he  grumbles 
whole-heartedly  about  French  policies.  It  does  him 
no  injustice  to  say  that  he  had  to  struggle  with  the 
idea  of  Reward  and  Place.  Some  small  recognition 
of  the  part  he  was  playing  would  have  been  so  sweet 
to  him  I  He  received  none.  But  to  believe  in  one's 
work  is  the  sweetest  reward  one  can  have  and  he 
had  this  reward  at  last,  for  he  came  to  believe  in  the 
Merchant  Marine. 

He  said,  in  anguish,  "All  we  shall  have  for  our 
funeral  oration  will  be  silence  everywhere."  But 
he  had  already  written  his  own  epitaph  and  that  of 
his  brave  companions:  "You  know  what  professional 
honor  is!" 

G.  F.  N. 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED 
TRANSPORT 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A 
TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

PART  ONE 

Coast  of  Morocco 
August  22, 1914 
On  board  the  Pamir 
My  dear  Friend,  — 

You  must  have  been  wondering  what  became 
of  me  in  all  this  scuffle.  It  is  rather  far  back,  is  n't  it, 
our  Fourteenth  of  July  in  New  Orleans  when  we  said 
good-bye  at  the  Dollar  Bar  after  a  cake-walk  to  the 
sound  of  the  gramophone?  I  am  going  to  tell  you 
everything  all  in  a  lump! 

The  Pamir  was  loading  her  cotton  —  five  thousand 
bales  —  up  to  the  twenty-fifth  of  July.  It  was  pretty 
hot  and  we  were  in  haste  to  get  off  for  Liverpool  and 
find  cooler  weather.  The  news,  too,  seemed  somewhat 
explosive.  American  journals  were  making  a  noise 
in  big  headlines  over  Serbia  and  the  rest,  but  it  was 
considered  a  bluff  of  the  pro-German  press  and  the 
Hearst  crowd.  Nevertheless,  we  were  glad  to  be  go- 
ing to  see  what  was  taking  place  in  France  and  the 
faces  of  countrymen. 

We  got  under  way  at  2  a.m.  At  the  start  a  big 
water-bruiser  just  missed  ramming  us,  but  the  pasha 

1 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

manoeuvred  well.  I  took  the  watch  at  three  o'clock 
in  the  place  of  Blangy,  who  was  having  a  touch  of 
fever  and  had  been  stuffing  himself  with  quinine  for 
two  days. 

What  beating  sun  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico!  Ninety- 
five  on  the  bridge,  one  hundred  and  four  in  the 
cabin  —  not  a  breath  of  wind!  In  the  Atlantic  it 
freshened  up  a  bit  and  Blangy  resumed  service. 

The  boat  ran  ten  knots  strong,  but  at  the  end  of 
three  days  you  should  have  seen  our  engine  wind 
itself  up  so  as  to  smash  everything!  The  horizontal 
shaft  broke  off  short  about  a  yard  from  the  thrust 
bearing.  We  must  have  run  into  a  submerged  wreck 
which  had  blocked  the  screw.  It  would  n't  surprise 
me  if  a  piece  of  the  screw  had  gone  to  the  bottom. 

Impossible  to  call  for  help,  as  we  have  no  wireless! 
Muriac,  the  engineer,  was  a  wonder.  He  found  some 
way  of  forging  on  our  wretched  anvil  a  couple  of  iron 
collars  which  he  riveted  onto  the  two  stumps  of  the 
shaft  with  eight  bolts.  That  took  two  days.  You 
can  imagine  how  the  pasha  Fourgues  grumbled  to 
see  himself  stopped  like  a  box  in  the  middle  of  the 
tub.  Can't  you  just  see  him,  with  his  slant  eyes  and 
his  goatee,  shouting  down  the  engine-room  hatch 
every  five  minutes:  — 

"Eh,  down  there!  Muriac!  Will  your  turnspit  be 
ready  to  turn  by  the  time  the  grapes  are  ripe?" 

"Another  hour  —  maybe  two!"  yells  Muriac. 
"But  you'd  do  better  to  leave  us  alone!" 

We  got  under  way  again  after  having  drifted  fifty 
2 


NO  LIGHTS 

miles  to  the  west.  Fourgues  was  afraid  the  engines 
would  not  give  their  ten  knots  any  more,  but  the 
shaft  was  solider  than  ever. 

All  this  delayed  us.  On  the  night  of  the  seventh  of 
August  we  entered  the  Irish  Channel  and  looked  for 
lights.  Macache!  I  had  the  watch  and  for  three  hours 
Fourgues  abused  me  as  he  knows  how  to  do,  because 
I  could  not  see  a  lighthouse  or  anything  else. 

"Who  wished  this  kind  of  a  blind  man  onto  me? 
Go  and  have  your  eyes  changed!  Go  back  on  land! 
I  wish  you  would!  Get  inside  anyway  —  you'll 
find  some  lighthouses  in  there  maybe!  Yes,  and 
you've  made  us  lose  three  hours.  This  trip  will  never 
end!" 

He  could  n't  see  the  lighthouses  any  more  than  I 
and  that  was  why  he  called  me  down.  We  had  got 
almost  near  enough  to  touch  land;  you  could  see  it, 
like  a  wharf  —  but  no  more  light  than  my  hand  — 
when,  all  of  a  sudden,  a  craft  going  at  full  speed 
overhauled  us!  It  had  lights  which  went  on  and  off. 
Fourgues  did  not  budge  because  they  could  see  him 
from  the  port  side.  I  kept  on  with  my  little  old 
course.  Bang!  Bang!  The  ship  fired  two  blank 
shots. 

"The  devil!"  said  Fourgues.  "We  have  struck 
the  destroyers  at  practice.  There  must  be  others. 
Keep  your  eyes  open,  my  boy." 

I  kept  my  eyes  open.  Bang!  A  shell  fell  ten  yards 
ahead  of  us.  The  destroyer  came  up  and  yelled 
through  the  megaphone:  — 

3 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"Stop!  Or  we'll  sink  your' 

You  can  imagine  that  we  stopped.  The  destroyer 
came  alongside.  There  was  nothing  to  see  except 
two  escarbilles  now  and  then. 

"Who  are  you?" 

"Pamir,  French  cargo  boat  with  cotton  from 
America  for  Liverpool.  Why  do  you  stop  us?" 

"Oh!  You're  French,  are  you?" 

"Yes!" 

"All  right!  War  is  declared!" 

"Good  God!"  cried  Fourgues  and  I  at  the  same 
time  and  he  fell  on  me  and  hugged  me. 

"Qa  y  est,  my  boy!  We  are  having  it  out  with  the 
Bodies!" 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  yelled  the  destroyer. 

"Go  back  to  France!"  answered  Fourgues  imme- 
diately, and  added:  — 

"Is  England  with  us?" 

"Yes,  of  course." 

"Hurrah!"  cried  Fourgues.  "Hard  aport  and  en 
route  for  H .  We'll  go  and  report  to  the  navy." 

The  destroyer  accompanied  us  a  little  way  and 
finally  left  us,  calling:  — 

"Good-bye  and  good  luck,  fellows!" 

"  Thanks.  Same  to  you ! ' ' 

There  is  no  denying  it,  Fourgues  is  a  good  sport. 
No  hesitation  about  his  turning  back  to  France!  He 
slapped  me  on  the  back,  offered  me  cigars,  and 
joked  on  the  bridge. 

"You  were  right,  there  weren't  any  lights!  Ex- 
4 


WAR  IS  DECLARED 

cept  when  they  lit  up  their  rostauds  for  the  Boches! 
Tumble  down,  my  boy,  and  tell  Muriac  and  Blangy. 
Rout  them  out  if  they  are  asleep.  How  their  eyes 
will  stick  out!  Send  them  to  the  bridge  and  come 
on  up  with  a  bottle  of  champagne.  It's  my  treat!" 

Blangy  and  Muriac  made  no  objections;  the  guns 
had  awakened  them,  but  they  supposed  it  was 
manoeuvres. 

"You're  not  going  to  show  us  a  ship?"  they  both 
said. 

"No,  it's  not  a  joke.  The  pasha  will  tell  you." 

Every  one  embraced  every  one  else.  No  one  slept 
any  more.  On  the  bridge  Fourgues  was  going  to 
pour  the  champagne,  but  he  spilled  it  on  our  hands 
in  the  dark,  he  was  trembling  so  with  emotion.  We 
drank  what  was  left. 

"With  all  this,"  he  said,  "we  don't  know  when  the 
thing  started.  Don't  we  look  stupid  without  a  radio 
or  anything!  We  might  just  as  well  have  fallen 
among  the  Boches!  But  it  does  n't  matter,  the  Eng- 
lish are  right  there!  What  might  not  happen  if  they 
had  left  us  in  the  lurch?" 

"And  the  Russians?"  queried  Muriac. 

"No  danger!"  said  Fourgues.  "We  are  all  going 
in  together." 

"  And  the  Italians  ?  "  said  Blangy. 

"That's  less  certain.  We  must  get  some  informa- 
tion. Could  you  hit  it  up  a  bit,  Muriac?" 

"We'll  try  up  to  eleven  knots.  The  coal  is  good 
and  the  shaft  will  hold." 

5 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"All  right.  Let  her  go!  We  must  get  to  H to- 
morrow." 

We  put  on  all  the  speed  that  was  possible.  As  for 
me,  I  didn't  sleep.  I  was  counting  on  a  leave  in 
August  while  the  boilers  were  being  cleaned  and  was 
going  home,  to  La  Rochelle.  You  know  why,  old 
man.  I  told  you  about  it  in  New  Orleans;  it  was 
for  this  year.  What  was  she  going  to  say,  the  poor 
little  thing?  I  had  left  without  seeing  her. 

The  Pamir  reached  H at  nine  in  the  morning. 

Fourgues  went  to  the  Naval  Prefecture  and  re- 
turned at  noon  with  the  daily  papers  and  the  news. 

"  No  one  knows  what  is  to  be  done  with  the  Pamir. 
We  have  to  wait  for  orders.  I  telegraphed  the  owner; 
I  asked  the  admiral  to  unload  the  cotton.  They  told 
me  to  keep  it  pending  further  instructions.  We  are 
forbidden  to  do  anything.  No  examination  of  our 
engines  or  boiler!  Muriac,  your  shaft  will  be  looked 
after  later!  This  afternoon  a  naval  officer  will  come 
on  board  to  decide  upon  the  destination  of  officers 
and  crew." 

If  we  had  not  been  at  war  Fourgues  would  have 
fumed.  To  lay  up  with  five  thousand  bales  of  cotton 
in  the  hold,  to  let  the  boilers  and  shaft  go  and  not  to 
know  what  we  were  going  to  do  the  next  day!  But  he 
took  it  very  well,  even  not  being  allowed  to  go  ashore 
and  the  order  to  keep  up  steam. 

The  naval  officer,  one  with  five  stripes,  came  about 
three  o'clock.  He  had  the  crew  assembled,  looked  at 
the  certificates,  and  in  half  an  hour  the  accounts  were 

6 


ORDERED  TO  MOROCCO 

settled.  Muriac  left,  Blangy  also.  Half  the  deck  crew 
and  three  quarters  of  the  engine-room  force  packed 
up  and  landed.  The  officer  said  that  it  was  to  man 
the  war-vessels  and  coast-defences.    He  told  us  to 

leave  that  very  evening  for  the  port  of  in 

Morocco,  where  we  should  receive  further  orders. 
Fourgues  jumped  a  little. 

"See  here!  You  want  me  to  run  over  to  Morocco 
with  two  officers  and  half  a  crew  or  less?" 

"We  need  the  officers.  Ships  of  war  come  first. 
Those  registered  in  the  marine  serve  in  the  fleet, 
officers  and  sailors.  As  for  men,  we  will  send  you  in 
five  hours  a  contingent  of  reservists,  five  seamen  and 
ten  for  the  engine-room." 

"  Might  just  as  well  leave  me  mine,  who  know  the 
ship!  My  shaft  is  broken,  my  boilers  are  rotten!" 

"Pshaw!  You'll  make  it!" 

"But  the  coal?  And  the  provisions?" 

"  Go  ahead;  you  can  provision  en  route  if  necessary. 
You  are  needed  in  Morocco." 

"To  do  what?" 

"You  will  receive  orders." 

"Can  you  let  me  have  charts  for  Morocco?  I  have 
only  those  of  America  or  Europe." 

"We'll  see.  I  don't  believe  there  are  any  left.  We 
gave  them  all  to  the  battleships." 

"  I  have  n't  any  wireless." 

"What's  the  need?  Are  you  afraid  the  Germans 
will  get  you?  We'll  take  care  of  that!" 

"And  my  five  thousand  bales  of  cotton?" 
7 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"There  is  nothing  to  do  but  go.  In  short,  hold 
yourself  in  readiness  to  get  under  way  at  six  o'clock, 
as  soon  as  you  have  received  your  reservists.  Do  you 
understand?" 

"All  right." 

"Send  your  men  along  in  my  boat.  I  still  have 
three  ships  to  inspect." 

Muriac,  Blangy,  and  the  crew  packed  up  in  five 
seconds,  believe  me.  There  was  not  even  time  to  shake 
hands.  What  was  going  to  become  of  those  fellows  ? 

"That's  all  right,"  Fourgues  said  to  me  when  we 
were  alone  again.  "You  can  take  charge  of  the  en- 
gines and  we  will  take  turns  on  the  watch  —  the 
two  of  us  —  unless  they  send  us  some  one  who  knows 
starboard  from  port.  Hurry  up!  Go  and  write  home 
—  I'm  going  to  do  the  same.  It's  two  years  since 
I  've  seen  my  wife  and  the  children  at  Orange.  And 
you,  poor  kid  —  engaged!  Oh,  well,  it  does  n't  mat- 
ter! I  am  satisfied.  They'll  see  that  the  old  Pamir 
can  account  for  herself." 

He  shook  my  hand.  We  both  of  us  wanted  to  weep. 
To  start  like  that,  with  a  damned  ramshackle  ship! 
We  went  down;  he  wrote  to  Orange,  I  wrote  to  La 
Rochelle  —  not  much,  you  know;  just  to  say  that 
we  were  there  and  to  address  us  at  the  Navy  De- 
partment with  "Please  forward"  in  large  letters  on 
the  envelope.  And  then  the  reservists  arrived.  What 
would  they  send  us? 

I  can  see  now  why  they  keep  the  regular  seamen 
in  the  navy.    The  others  are  such  elephants!    For 

8 


A  MOTLEY  CREW 

the  deck,  there  was  a  croupier  from  Deauville,  a  mo- 
torman,  a  news-dealer,  a  department-store  clerk,  a 
cabby,  a  movie-operator,  three  delivery-men,  a  bill- 
poster, a  cattle-dealer,  and  three  more  of  the  same 
sort.  What  do  they  remember  about  the  navy? 
They  arrived,  stupid,  fat,  and  full  of  questions. 
There  was  no  time  wasted.  The  elevator  and  the 
movie  are  to  look  out  for  the  fires,  the  motorman 
has  the  helm,  the  movie-man  also  has  the  dynamo. 
I  forgot  the  head  cook  of  the  Hotel  Romantic  at 
Monte  Carlo!  We  annexed  him  for  the  officers'  table. 
If  he  can  get  along  with  beans  and  canned  monkey, 
he  is  a  wizard.  As  to  Fabrice,  whom  you  may  re- 
member, —  the  little  fafa  who  made  such  good  cock- 
tails at  Galveston,  —  he  returned  to  the  cathead. 

The  Pamir  left  H at  exactly  six  o'clock.    Not 

necessary  to  add  that  Fourgues  and  I  did  not  shut 
an  eye  during  the  trip.  Twelve  hours'  watch  apiece 
out  of  the  twenty-four  and  beastly  weather.  The 
rest  of  the  time  I  spent  in  the  engine-room  in  over- 
alls trying  to  guard  against  overheating  and  leaks. 
At  the  school  of  hydrography  one  learns  little  about 
mechanics  —  I  am  the  more  aware  of  this,  having 
forgotten  everything!  The  first  day  we  had  conden- 
sation in  the  pressure  cylinder,  which  struck  the  cap 
till  I  thought  the  old  box  would  blow  up.  We  were 
obliged  to  reduce  speed  and  empty  it  out.  The  en- 
gine-room filled  with  steam.  All  the  reservists  ran 
off,  yelling  like  skunks.  With  the  old  Pamir  men 
we  patched  everything  up  and  the  next  day  it  was 

9 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  tubes  of  boiler  3  which  began  to  burst.  That's 
the  old  one  and  it  ought  to  be  re-tubed  right 
away.  The  cattle-dealer,  who  had  his  training  in 
the  commissariat,  did  not  know  where  the  cocks  of 
the  cylinder  were.  When  one  had  emptied  itself  he 
simply  let  it  go.  The  gauge  fell  to  zero  and  you  can 
imagine  what  happened.  We  drew  the  fire  under  one 
boiler  and  after  that  made  not  more  than  seven 
knots.  In  the  Gulf  of  Gascony  we  had  a  hard  wind. 
The  delivery-man  and  the  bill-poster  came  out  of  the 
furnace-room  half  dead,  spitting  blood  and  coal- 
dust  by  the  quart,  so  now  there  was  no  way  of  get- 
ting the  coal  on  the  fire.  Our  stokers  were  simply 
unable  to  stoke.  They  would  get  a  load  and  then  fall 
down  with  each  shovelful,  sending  the  fuel  every- 
where except  into  the  mouth  of  the  furnace.  Fourgues 
reduced  to  five  knots. 

With  such  a  crew  he  was  afraid  the  trip  would 
take  a  month,  for  which  we  had  neither  provisions 

nor  coal.  So  he  put  in  at  the  port  of and  was 

rather  badly  received.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  Sun- 
day and  they  wanted  to  know  why  he  came  bother- 
ing people  then  instead  of  on  a  week-day.  He  must 
have  handed  them  something,  but  I  was  not  able 
to  hear  what.  They  gave  him  permission  to  get  the 
provisions,  but  as  for  coal,  barca! 

"What!"  says  he,  "you  have  heaps  there!   Can't 
you  give  me  half  of  one  pile?  " 

"Impossible.  What  you  see  there  belongs  to  the 
mobilization." 

10 


BLANGY'S  LUCK 

"Eh  bien!  We  are  not  merely  mobilized,  we  are  at 
war!" 

"Possibly,  but  this  is  stock  belonging  to  the  mo- 
bilization —  which  means  that  it  can't  be  touched." 

There  was  no  way  out  of  it.  But  of  what  use  is 
coal  which  is  there  for  war,  but  which  cannot  be  given 
out  in  time  of  war?  The  Pamir  sailed  after  eight 
hours  in  port.  We  got  some  provisions.  Fourgues 
telegraphed  to  the  office  for  money  to  be  sent  to  Mo- 
rocco. We  were  broke,  and  we  had  to  eat  down  there 
and  pay  for  coal  and  get  water  and  everything. 

The  rest  of  the  passage  was  so-so,  between  five  and 
six  knots.  The  bearings  got  hot,  the  grease  ran  short, 
the  pump  was  clogged,  and  there  were  three  feet  of 
water  under  the  planks  of  the  stoke-hole.  You  can 
imagine  the  smell.  Muriac  had  the  right  of  it;  he 
would  never  let  any  one  put  a  nose  into  his  shop,  but 
just  the  same  things  went!  As  for  me,  I  give  it  up. 
Bridge  and  engine,  the  watch — it  was  enough  to  drive 
a  man  crazy!  Blangy  was  lucky.  By  this  time  he 
must  be  on  a  Government  ship  with  a  regular  staff. 
I  wonder  why  it  was  he  instead  of  I  who  went.  We 
belong  to  the  same  class;  only  he  gave  his  certificate 
to  the  officer  at  H first  and  was  already  ar- 
ranged for  when  I  handed  in  mine.  They  promised 
well,  old  man,  but  much  water  will  pass  under  the 
Pamir  before  they  give  us  any  officers. 

We  reached  Morocco  day  before  yesterday.  How 
did  we  get  into  the  harbor?    Ask  Fourgues!    We 

didn't  get  the  charts  at  H after  all,  and  had 

11 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

nothing  but  the  tract-chart  of  the  Atlantic,  where 
the  coast  of  Morocco  occupies  about  half  an  inch. 
The  bottom  is  bad,  the  coast  is  flat.  We  spent  a 
day  and  a  night  wandering  around  in  sight  of  beaches 
with  three  cacti  and  a  palm.  Fourgues  did  n't  want 
to  get  into  the  wrong  port  and  at  a  distance  they  all 
looked  alike.  No  way  to  get  our  bearings  —  clouds 
or  fog  all  the  time.  Fortunately  we  came  upon  an 
American  who  signalled  our  position  to  us  and  the 
route  to  follow.   And  that's  how  the  Pamir  got  in. 

In  port  everybody  had  skipped  to  France  by  the 
last  boat.  There  was  one  army  officer,  one  premier 
maitre  de  marine,  and  no  one  else.  They  asked  us 
what  we  were  going  to  do  and  if  we  had  any  military 
supplies. 

"  Supplies! "  cried  Fourgues.  " Five  thousand  bales 
of  cotton,  boilers  shaken  to  pieces,  nothing  more  to 
eat,  some  scrapings  of  coal,  and  not  a  cent  in  the 
till!" 

"What  the  devil  are  you  going  to  do  in  Morocco 
then?" 

"  I  was  sent  here  from  H and  they  said  there 

would  be  orders  here  for  the  Pamir." 

"First  we've  heard  of  it.  Wait  awhile  and  we'll 
find  something  for  you  to  do." 

And  so,  old  fellow,  you  see  why  I  write  you  from 
Morocco.  We  are  waiting  for  the  orders  which  have 
been  demanded  in  Paris,  in  Rabat,  and  in  Tangiers. 
Nothing  comes.  Fourgues  will  never  recover  his  tem- 
per again.    Our  cotton  has  begun  to  heat,  for  it  is 

12 


WORKING  THE  RESERVISTS 

warm  here.  Half  the  reservists  are  on  their  backs, 
—  diarrhoea,  gastric  troubles,  general  slump.  You 
ought  to  hear  them.  Impossible  to  go  anywhere  or 
to  unload,  for  we  were  told  to  be  ready  to  start  on 
two  hours'  notice.  As  for  me,  I  slept  for  nearly  thirty- 
six  —  I  had  had  my  share!  Fourgues  is  very  nice  to 
me.  He  takes  it  out  on  the  reservists,  and  what 
does  n't  he  hand  out  to  them!  He  is  dead  right.  All 
those  fellows  thought  they  were  going  to  have  an  easy 
time  and  they  need  to  be  jacked  up. 

You  can  call  yourself  in  luck,  having  me  write 
you  such  a  long  letter.  But  I  am  bored  to  death  and 
I  want  to  know  what  has  become  of  you  and  the 
fellows.  A  ship  from  the  south  is  passing  to-morrow 
and  I  shall  send  this  at  a  chance.  I  address  it  to 
your  family,  hoping  they  will  see  that  it  reaches 
you.  Would  you  like  it  if  we  were  to  write  each  other 
once  a  month  as  before?  I  will  try  to.  Shake! 

Port  of  K ,  Mediterranean 

October  5,  iqi4 
My  dear  Friend,  — 

And  so  you  too  were  taken  from  your  ship,  like 
Blangy!  (By  the  way,  I  have  received  nothing  from 
him,  not  even  a  card.  His  laziness  has  got  the  better 
of  him  again  evidently.)  All  the  same,  I  wish  I  might 
see  you  on  your  battleship,  in  a  double-turret,  on 
the  lookout  for  twelve  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four 
—  which  would  bore  you,  my  poor  old  fellow,  who 
told  me  in  New  Orleans  how  you  were  soon  going 

13 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

to  command  a  Chilian  sailing-vessel  —  "And  tack 
about  like  this  and  let  out  the  sheets  like  that!"  I 
can  still  hear  you.  And  now  you  are  a  gunner!  They 
must  need  excellent  observers  on  your  battleships, 
and  I  remember  that  with  the  sextant  and  the  table 
of  logarithms  you  used  to  beat  us  all.  To  find  your 
position  within  half  a  mile  in  twelve  minutes  was 
your  motto.  But  it  must  embarrass  you  not  to  be 
able  to  smoke  your  pipe.  Never  mind!  As  a  hooker, 
the  battleship  Auvergne  is  right  there  —  the  very 
latest  thing!  I  saw  her  launched.  The  accommo- 
dations, too,  must  be  rather  good,  and  one  of  these 
fine  days  you  will  send  a  few  carefully  selected 
prunes  at  the  Austro-Boches  along  the  coast  off  Pola 
or  Cattaro.  You  won't  miss  them,  will  you,  as  in 
the  cases  of  the  Goeben  and  the  Breslau?  Taking  it 
all  in  all,  I  don't  pity  you. 

As  to  the  Pamir,  they  let  us  pitch  at  anchor  for 
ten  days  there  in  Morocco.  We  rolled  from  one  side 
to  the  other,  notwithstanding  our  five  thousand 
bales  of  cotton.  I  would  n't  have  believed  there  was 
so  much  swell  on  that  damned  coast.  I  recommend 
it  to  you  for  loading!  You  have  to  look  smart  or 
you  demolish  your  tackle,  your  derrick,  and  the  whole 
shop,  and  get  your  load  in  your  face.  The  stupidest 
part  of  it  is  that  when  there  is  n't  a  cloud  nor  so 
much  as  a  wisp  of  breeze,  you  still  get  rollers  and 
rollers,  high  as  houses,  from  the  sea.  Furniture,  dishes, 
books  —  all  tumble  to  the  floor.  In  dead  calms  you 
would  think  you  were  in  an  Indo-Chinese  monsoon. 

14 


ORDERED  TO  DAKAR 

They  had  no  idea  what  to  do  with  us  down  there. 
Fourgues  would  not  set  foot  on  land  again,  he  was 
so  furious  at  being  away  off  with  a  lot  of  Arabs 
while  others  were  working  in  France.  And  then  what 
arias  to  get  coal  I  There  was  a  German  ship  of  the 
Woermann  line  in  the  road,  which  had  been  stuck 
ever  since  the  mobilization,  hold  and  bunkers  full 
of  coal.  All  that  was  necessary  was  to  take  it!  Oh, 
dear,  no!  Must  n't  touch  the  Boche  even  for  a  lump 
or  a  tarpaulin!  The  Boche  is  sacred!  This  ship  car- 
ried bananas  and  peanuts.  All  had  rotted  on  the 
spot  and  you  could  smell  them  for  two  miles. 

All  the  same,  Fourgues  made  so  much  music  about 
the  coal  that  they  gave  him  some.  We  really  could 
not  go  as  far  as  Gibraltar!  We  took  some  from  the 
dock,  from  a  heap  intended  for  the  expeditionary 
corps.  You  can  imagine  all  the  papers  that  were 
necessary,  and  besides,  they  counted  the  sacks  — 
just  enough  to  get  us  to  our  destination.  If  the  Pamir 
had  taken  one  more  day,  she  would  have  stopped 
short  like  a  sailing  vessel  on  the  Equator. 

Finally,  one  day,  we  were  told  to  light  out  for 
Oran,  to  transport  Algerian  troops.  At  the  last 
moment  a  counter-order!  Two  days  later,  order  to 
leave  for  Dakar  and  to  put  ourselves  at  the  serv- 
ice of  the  navy  down  there.  We  had  weighed  anchor, 
but  not  yet  stowed  it  when  they  signalled  us  to  let 
go  again  where  we  were.  Five  days  passed.  No 
news,  no  letters  from  home.  We  got  down  in  the 
mouth.     Fourgues   stayed   in   his   cabin,   playing 

15 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

solitaire,  swearing  like  a  pagan.  I  gave  lectures  on 
the  reservoirs,  their  drain-pipes  and  valves.  Muriac 
would  have  been  amused  to  hear  me  explaining  the 
mechanism.  The  rest  of  the  time  I  played  the  man- 
dolin, but  enthusiasm  was  lacking,  and,  moreover, 
a  good  deal  would  have  been  necessary  to  keep  up 
the  tinkle-tinkle,  hanging  on  to  the  wall  every  ten 
measures  to  keep  from  sliding  down  with  the  rollers. 
Finally  I  played  lying  down!  One  fine  morning  they 
ordered  us  to  get  under  way  in  a  hurry  and  set  out 

for  T ,  twenty  miles  to  the  north,  to  transport 

a  tribe  of  Germans  driven  out  of  Morocco.  Dirty 
work,  but  just  the  same  we  were  glad  to  be  moving. 

What  a  stinking  anchorage  at  T ,  —  straight 

coast,  open  roadstead,  no  anchor-hold,  a  swell  and 
a  pebbly  bar!  Lovely!  We  are  beginning  to  learn 
what  rolling  from  side  to  side  means. 

On  land  there  were  about  fifty  Boches  with  all 
their  goods  —  furniture,  pianos,  trunks,  -piled  high,  a 
regular  moving.  The  Germans  in  Morocco  were  well 
preserved.  They  have  all  passed  the  military  age, 
for  it  is  so  written  in  their  papers  —  the  youngest 
was  fifty.  You  who  are  a  physiognomist  would  have 
put  him  down  at  thirty-five.  The  authorities  ordered 
us  to  treat  them  with  respect  on  account  of  an  ar- 
ticle in  the  international  law,  and  to  give  them  ac- 
commodations, not  as  prisoners,  but  as  passengers 
"under  surveillance.,,  Fourgues,  who  hates  under- 
hand dealing,  said  that  he  was  not  going  to  incon- 
venience the  crew  for  the  Boches  and  that  he  should 

16 


AN  UNFORTUNATE  PIANO 

instal  them  on  the  deck.  Then  he  was  told  to  con- 
struct wooden  shelters  on  the  deck,  for  dormitories 
and  cabins.  He  said  he  had  no  wood  for  the  purpose, 
so  they  sent  him  planks  and  new  joists  and  some 
military  carpenters,  and  in  forty-eight  hours  the 
entire  deck  from  the  smokestack  to  the  stern  was 
covered  over  with  a  fine  cabin.  We  looked  like  one 
of  those  river  wash-houses. 

But  that  was  n't  all.  There  was  the  furniture  of 
these  gentlemen,  enough  to  fill  a  train,  and  they  did 
not  want  it  broken.  Fourgues  had  planned  to  pile 
it  pell-mell  into  the  bow  and  then  lash  it  above  the 
main  hatch. 

"You  see,  my  boy,"  he  said  to  me,  pulling  his 
goatee,  "there  won't  be  much  left  of  their  fiddle- 
faddles  if  we  get  a  good  southwest  wind  in  our  backs. 
There  will  be  just  enough  to  make  matches." 

Unfortunately,  in  the  first  batch  there  was  a 
piano.  We  slung  and  hoisted  it  with  tackle,  and  in 
spite  of  the  swell  it  was  not  going  badly  and  had 
gotten  over  the  hatch.  But  as  it  began  to  descend, 
what  did  the  cable  do  but  mix  itself  up  with  the 
winch  and  stop  short,  our  piano  in  the  air.  Three 
fine  swells  came  along  and  everybody  hung  on  to 
keep  the  thing  from  falling.  The  piano  swung  once, 
then  once  more,  and  then  bang  onto  the  port  railing. 
The  lid  and  cover  flew  off.  Bang  to  starboard!  The 
piano  veered,  the  black  and  white  keys  chased  them- 
selves over  the  deck,  the  strings  snapped  one  after 
the  other  like  a  machine  gun,  and  the  whole  shop 

17 


,  THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

tumbled  down.  It  looked  like  a  dead  pack-horse. 
Fourgues  shook  with  silent  laughter  and  turned  as 
red  as  a  tomato.  As  for  me,  I  simply  could  not  hold 
in  and  the  crew  howled  for  joy.  But  the  owner,  a 
Boche  in  spectacles,  raised  the  deuce.  He  shot 
volleys  of  insults  at  us,  but  fortunately  he  spoke 
in  his  own  disgusting  language,  for  Fourgues  was  be- 
ginning to  get  into  a  rage  and  would  have  sent  him 
overboard  without  hesitation  if  he  had  understood 
a  single  word.  It  was  just  before  the  Marne  and 
the  Bodies  were  snapping  their  fingers  at  us,  you 
see.  This  particular  one  went  on  land  shaking  his 
fist.  We  dumped  what  remained  of  the  piano  into 
the  sea  and  loaded  on  the  rest  of  the  furniture,  and 
the  next  day  we  received  an  order  to  put  all  their 
stuff  in  the  hold.  It  was  a  little  adjutant  who  came 
to  announce  this  to  Fourgues.  He  was  well  received: 

"I  am  loaded  to  the  hatches  with  cotton  and  I 
won't  unload  a  single  bale.  Even  if  you  bring  me  a 
written  order,  I  forbid  my  men  to  touch  it  without 
the  order  of  my  owner.  I  can't  keep  you  from  carry- 
ing off  my  cotton,  but  you  will  have  to  furnish  the 
men." 

Well,  then,  a  gang  from  land  came  and  unloaded 
half  the  hold.  I  wonder  what  in  the  world  they  did 
with  it!  We  stowed  the  stuff  as  well  as  we  could.  To 
be  sure,  several  chairs  and  valises  went  overboard, 
but  nobody  went  after  them.  The  Boches  asked 
—  but  they  did  not  ask  Fourgues  —  to  be  given 
some  bales  of  cotton  for  mattresses.    So  during  the 

18 


THIRSTY  GERMANS 

entire  voyage  they  slept  like  pigs  in  clover  while  we 
were  on  the  company's  sea-biscuit  as  usual. 

On  the  whole,  it  passed  off  very  well.  At  the  first 
meal  they  were  rather  high-handed.  One  of  them,  an 
old  one,  had  the  face  to  go  on  the  bridge  afterwards 
and  tell  Fourgues  that  there  was  n't  anything  to  eat, 
that  Germans  had  to  have  beer  instead  of  water,  and 
that  all  these  from  Hamburg  and  Leipsic  and  else- 
where were  gentlemen  of  rank  who  had  helped  France 
conquer  Morocco  and  had  colonized  there  because 
France  lacked  the  ability  to  do  so  and  that  they  un- 
derstood they  were  to  be  treated  with  respect.  It 
was  worth  a  seat  to  see  Fourgues  during  this  little 
discourse.  He  put  his  hands  in  his  pockets  in  order 
not  to  pitch  the  man  of  beer  overboard.  When  the 
other  had  finished,  Fourgues  answered  in  his  little 
calm  voice,  the  one  he  uses,  you  know,  when  he  is  in 
such  a  rage  that  he  is  absolutely  unemphatic:  — 

"The  first  person,  you  or  another,  who  makes  any 
complaint  I  shall  put  into  the  hold  with  the  furniture. 
If  you  don't  like  the  food  of  the  crew,  you  are  not 
obliged  to  eat  it.  I  won't  have  one  of  you  speak  to 

me.  This  officer  is  to  look  after  you.   Get  to  h 

off  the  bridge!" 

They  were  quite  subdued  and  we  heard  no  more 
from  them.  They  attended  to  their  little  affairs  in 
their  wooden  stable  and  they  slept.  Easy  enough 
to  manage,  these  folks,  when  you  scare  them  a  bit. 
The  old  man  would  ask  me  politely  when  they 
wanted  anything:  — 

19 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"  Could  you  add  a  little  sugar  to  the  coffee?  Could 
you  sell  us  some  matches?" 

The  latter  was  in  order  to  start  conversation,  for 
afterwards  he  always  asked  me  if  the  Pamir  were 
surely  going  back  to  France. 

"Why  do  you  wish  to  know?" 

"Just  because!  Honestly,  you  are  n't  going  to  a 
neutral  port,  are  you?" 

"No,  we  are  bound  for  France." 

"And  where?" 

"If  you  know  the  country,  you  will  recognize  it." 

"All  right,  and  I  may  tell  my  friends  that  we  are 
not  going  to  a  neutral  country  ?" 

After  the  fifth  or  sixth  time  I  told  Fourgues  about 
this. 

"Parbleu!"  he  said;  "all  these  rascals  are  of  mil- 
itary age.  If  we  landed  them  in  Spain  they  would 
have  to  hurry  over  and  take  a  taste  of  our  75's. 
They  prefer  a  season  in  France  even  though  they  are 
interned.  They  know  we  are  much  too  stupid  to  hurt 
them." 

Fourgues  was  right.  When  I  said  as  much  to  the 
old  Boche,  he  smiled  without  answering.  We  landed 

them  at and  they  have  gone  to  hang  themselves 

somewhere  else.  And  whew!  but  their  quarters  were 
filthy!  We  had  to  wash  and  scour  for  two  days  and 
it  still  smells. 

You  can  be  sure  that  the  owner  arrived  by  the  first 
train.  He  was  beginning  to  ask  himself  what  had 
become  of  the  Pamir  and  he  did  n't  at  all  like  losing 


A  STORMY  INTERVIEW 

money.  His  first  interview  with  Fourgues  was  a 
little  stormy.  He  didn't  quite  dare  reproach  him 
for  having  turned  about  before  Liverpool  because 
that  would  have  been  a  little  too  strong,  but  just  the 
same  he  snapped:  — 

"You  might  just  as  well  have  gone  on  to  your 
destination.   Two  days  more  or  less  is  n't  anything." 

"It  would  n't  have  happened,"  said  Fourgues,  "if 
the  horizontal  shaft  had  n't  broken  in  the  middle  of 
the  Atlantic.  Muriac  got  us  out  of  that  splendidly, 
but  with  all  respect  to  you,  the  whole  engine  is  falling 
to  pieces." 

"At  least,"  said  the  other,  "you  have  your  five 
thousand  bales  of  cotton." 

"Five  thousand  I  Minus  fifteen  hundred  which 
are  high  and  dry  in  Morocco!" 

Well,  sir,  that  hurt!  He  went  'way  up  in  the  air. 
It  had  to  be  explained  ten  times,  with  the  adjutant's 
written  order  and  all  the  rest  of  the  red  tape. 

"Fifteen  hundred  bales  of  cotton  gone!  Fifteen 
hundred  bales  of  cotton  gone!"  He  kept  repeating 
it  over  and  over. 

Then  Fourgues,  who  had  had  all  he  could  stand 
ever  since  Morocco,  put  it  to  him  straight  and  told 
him  to  his  face  that  if  he  did  n't  like  the  way  things 
had  been  run,  he  could  hand  the  Pamir  and  her 
engine  and  her  cotton  over  to  some  one  else,  and  that 
without  officers  or  crew  it  was  pretty  rough  to  be 
blamed.  The  owner  was  scared.  He  slapped  the 
pasha  on  the  shoulder  and  said:  — 

21 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"  We  '11  arrange  all  that,  my  good  friend.  Don't  get 
excited.  It 's  all  right  —  everything  I  said  was  meant 
for  the  stockholders.  You  have  been  quite  in  order. 
I  am  going  to  see  the  admiral.  The  Government  will 
look  after  everything  and  we'll  try  to  have  the  Pamir 
chartered  or  some  other  arrangement  made." 

He  went  away  as  sweet  as  honey,  but  I  know  what 
that  means  —  it's  going  to  cost  the  Princess1  dear! 
He  must  have  moved  heaven  and  earth,  for  the  next 
day  a  post  captain  came  on  board  to  ask  Fourgues 
how  much  coal  he  could  take. 

"Three  thousand  tons!" 

"The  Government  engages  you  to  carry  coal  to 
the  navy.  Lighters  will  come  alongside  at  noon  and 
you  are  to  load  at  once." 

"And  where  shall  I  put  it?  I  have  one  hold  full 
and  the  other  half-full  of  cotton." 

Then  the  captain  began  to  storm  and  said  that  he 
had  been  disturbed  for  nothing  and  that  he  did  n't 
know  where  to  put  the  cotton,  and  that  Fourgues 
ought  to  have  been  able  to  get  rid  of  it  all  in  Morocco, 
and  that  there  was  n't  any  sense  in  a  boat  that  was 
neither  full  nor  empty.  They  don't  mince  their  words 
in  the  navy  when  they  are  talking  to  the  merchant 
marine.  But  Fourgues  took  it  with  good  grace  be- 
cause he  had  an  idea  that  he  could  get  down  to 
Orange  and  so  he  did  n't  care.  Moreover,  he  knew 
the  owner  could  arrange  it  all  with  the  authorities 
much  better  than  he.  No  time  was  lost.  The  owner 
1  The  Government. 
22 


IN  COMMAND 

returned  the  next  day  and  said  that  after  consulta- 
tion it  had  been  agreed  that  the  forward  hold  was  to 
be  emptied  and  loaded  with  fifteen  hundred  tons  of 
special  coal  for  torpedo-boats,  but  that  the  cotton 
should  be  left  aft.  After  having  supplied  the  navy,  the 
Pamir  would  go  to  England  and  unload  her  cotton  at 
Liverpool  in  order  that  all  might  not  be  lost,  and  then 
get  more  coal  at  Cardiff  and  go  again  to  the  navy. 

"In  this  way  my  interests  and  those  of  the  Gov- 
ernment are  mutually  protected.  I  sell  only  half  my 
cotton  and  you  get  a  load  of  coal  at  Cardiff  at  a 
cheap  rate." 

I  should  like  very  much  to  know  how  much  he 
made  them  pay  him  for  our  promenade  over  to 
Morocco  and  the  fifteen  hundred  bales  of  cotton  that 
were  left  behind  and  the  chartering  of  the  Pamir. 
He  could  not  have  lost  because  he  went  away  very 
sprightly  after  authorizing  Fourgues  to  go  to  Orange. 
So  I  am  here  alone  with  ship,  engine,  loading,  and 
everything.  As  for  La  Rochelle,  it's  all  up.  The 
coal  is  due  to-morrow  at  4  a.m. 

Fourgues  has  just  gone  and  I  am  in  charge.  There 
had  to  be  a  war  for  me  to  get  a  command!  Well, 
perhaps  I  shall  see  your  Auvergne  down  there  and 
we  shall  swap  stories.  So  long,  old  pal. 

Cardiff,  November  i5,  1914 
My  dear  Friend,  — 

Will  you  believe  that  I  almost  saw  your  battle- 
ship? It  was  just  as  we  entered  the  Adriatic  south  of 

23 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Leuca.  At  dawn  I  was  on  the  watch  and  I  saw  some 
smoke  in  the  north  —  the  kind  that  only  warships 
know  how  to  make.  Afterwards  I  saw  the  masts  and 
smokestacks  of  three  big  barks  which  were  going 
along  one  after  the  other.  Fourgues  thought  it  was 
a  division  of  the  big  fellows  bound  for  Malta  to  coal. 
He  is  pretty  sharp  —  for  at  Liverpool  I  received  your 
letter  dated  in  Malta  five  days  after  this  encounter. 
I  will  speak  of  your  letter  later,  but  first  let  me  tell 
you  of  affairs  on  the  Pamir. 

I  thought  we  should  never  be  done  loading  coal  at 

K .   Fifteen  hundred  tons  is  n't  very  much.    In 

England  or  America  it  would  n't  have  taken  more 
than  a  morning.  There  you  are  tied  to  a  wharf,  the 
cars  come,  you  capsize  them  into  the  hold,  and  when 
one  train  is  empty  another  pulls  up. 

At  K it  took  three  full  days,  which  is  as  much 

as  to  say  that  we  put  it  in  with  a  teaspoon.  In  the 
first  place,  they  left  us  attached  to  a  buoy  out  in  the 
harbor  and  the  lighters  came  now  and  then  in  a  sort 
of  happy-go-lucky  fashion.  They  had  a  gang  on 
board  of  the  kind  that  doesn't  get  blistered,  who 
stuffed  the  coal  into  sacks  with  shovels  and  then 
loaded  them  on  with  a  windlass,  ten  at  a  time.  There 
were  other  men  in  the  hold  who  undid  the  sacks,  emp- 
tied and  shook  them  out,  hung  them  up  on  the  hook 
and  sent  them  out  again.  While  the  emptying  was 
going  on  the  windlass  kept  on  running  just  the  same. 
I  understand  now  why  coal  costs  the  navy  so  much! 

That  was  not  all.  The  port  told  us  that  we  were  to 
24 


LOADING  COAL  FOR  THE  NAVY 

carry  coal  in  briquettes  especially  for  torpedo-boats, 
so  of  course  I  expected  briquettes.  Not  at  all!  Ten 
lighters  arrived  loaded  with  lump  coal.  I  say  lump 
coal,  but  I  might  better  call  it  dust.  It  must  have 
been  there  for  several  years,  rotting  in  the  yard.  I 
shouted  to  the  captain  of  the  tug  that  there  had  been 
a  mistake  and  that  his  dust  must  be  for  some  other 
boat. 

He  asked  me  if  I  were  the  Pamir.  Yes,  indeed,  I 
said,  could  n't  he  read  the  name  ?  Then  he  answered 
that  his  papers  were  for  the  Pamir.  He  added  that 
the  briquettes  would  arrive  later. 

The  moment  there  is  a  paper  I  go  ahead:  bri- 
quettes or  coal-dust,  they're  all  cargo!  It  took  two 
days  for  a  thousand  tons  and  the  head  of  the  gang 
thought  that  was  going  fast!  What  would  he  catch 
from  the  boss,  I  wonder,  if  the  Pamir  had  to  pay  two 
days'  anchorage  for  four  shovelfuls  of  coal? 

"But,"  I  asked,  "isn't  this  coal  for  the  torpedo- 
boats  and  is  n't  it  true  that  they  don't  use  anything 
but  briquettes?" 

"You'll  find  them  all  down  there,  cruisers  and 
warships.  They  eat  anything.  And,  anyway,  these 
ten  lighters  were  ready  and  we  had  to  send  you  a 
thousand  tons,  so  we  took  the  first  thing  at  hand." 

They  don't  worry  about  things  at  K ,  believe 

me!  The  briquettes  arrived  the  third  day  and  it  was 
necessary  to  flatten  out  the  coal-dust,  which  was 
piled  up  like  a  sugar-loaf,  so  that  they  should  not 
tumble  to  the  bottom  of  the  hold.    We  mustn't 

25 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

break  them,  said  the  foreman,  because  that  ruined 
them.  But  only  the  tops  of  the  lighters  were  stowed, 
all  fine  and  proper,  with  whole  briquettes.  (It  was 
fine  coal,  too,  Grand-Combe  and  Lens,  on  the  top  of 
the  basket.)  But  after  two  or  three  layers  there  was 
nothing  but  leavings,  pieces*as  big  as  your  fist,  and 
in  the  bottom  —  mud  —  which  we  had  to  take  just 
the  same  because  the  order  read  to  send  the  lighters 
back  well  scraped  out.  If  everybody  scrapes  them 
why  should  there  be  any  mud?  It  will  be  nice  in 
the  furnaces  of  the  torpedo-boats!  Do  you  recall  the 
cases  of  oranges  we  bought  at  Carthagena:  the  top 
layers  so  wonderful,  the  bottom  rotten?  So  it  was 
with  their  coal. 

Fourgues  came  at  seven  that  evening  and  we  left 
at  eight.  Now  he  is  indifferent.  He  saw  his  people 
at  Orange  and  found  everything  all  right  and  brought 
back  with  him  a  lot  of  the  macaroons  they  make  at 
Aix  and  a  cask  of  marc.  He  has  not  been  angry  once 
during  the  whole  voyage,  and  what  is  more,  he  has 
promised  me  on  his  word  of  honor  that  it  will  be  my 
turn  next  time.  With  all  his  faults  he  is  not  a  liar! 
After  three  or  four  months  I  shall  make  a  trip  home 
and  perhaps  I  shall  have  been  able  to  put  enough 
aside  to  get  married.   We  shall  see. 

Things  are  going  better  all  the  same.   At  K 

the  navy  gave  us  a  reservist  quartermaster.  He  is 
the  owner  of  boats  on  the  Seine  and  caught  on 
quickly.  As  far  as  Liverpool  we  divided  the  watch 
among  the  three  of  us  and  so  could  breathe.   During 


REPAIRING  THE  ENGINE 

the  trip  I  taught  the  motorman  the  rules  of  naviga- 
tion, lights,  whistles,  etc.  From  Liverpool  to  Cardiff 
he  took  the  watch  under  Fourgues'  supervision  and 
got  along  well  enough.  He  will  watch  by  himself  on 
the  return  voyage  and  you  can  see  your  old  chum 
beginning  to  revive. 

At  K there  was  an  engineer  who  came  to  look 

at  our  broken  shaft  and  repairs.  He  found  it  rather 
rustic  (as  he  termed  it)  and  had  a  new  collar  made 
for  us,  all  polished  and  well-turned  with  a  guard  and 
a  brake.  It  was  a  bit  too  fancy  to  be  solid  and  started 
in  playing  tricks.  At  the  first  shot  the  two  pieces  of 
the  shaft  began  to  turn  separately.  Fortunately  I 
had  kept  Muriac's  stumps. 

The  Pamir  was  ordered  to  take  the  route  to  Anti- 
paxos.  She  made  her  ten  knots  and  arrived  without 
too  much  trouble.  The  reservists  are  beginning  to 
get  on.  I  forgot  to  say  that  the  bursted  tubes  of 
boiler  3  have  been  changed.  It  is  n't  perfect,  but  if 
the  cord  does  n't  get  pulled  too  hard,  we  can  wait 
awhile  for  new  tubes.  We  arrived  at  Antipaxos  at 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Why  do  they  make  us 
sail  with  all  lights  on  when  the  ships  of  war  have  all 
lights  out?  We  are  good  game,  too,  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  tell  what  one  is  going  into.  During  the  last 
night,  with  the  sky  overcast  so  that  there  was  no  see- 
ing ahead,  suddenly  I  smelt  smoke  right  in  my  face, 
on  the  starboard  bow.  Well,  old  man,  it  was  one  of 
your  cruisers  with  twenty-six  smokestacks  which  had 
just  cut  across  our  course  at  fifty  yards  and  which 

27 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

sent  its  searchlights  into  my  eyes.  I  had  n't  seen  a 
thing!  You  could  have  knocked  me  flat!  Really,  they 
might  at  least  hang  out  a  kerosene  lantern  when  they 
are  going  to  do  things  like  that.  I  know  that  their 
officers  watch,  but  just  the  same,  one  of  these  days 
there  is  going  to  be  a  collision. 

Before  Antipaxos  a  destroyer  ran  for  us  full  speed. 
We  hoisted  our  number.  She  stopped  on  the  port 
side  at  ten  yards.  The  commander  looked  furious. 

"Are  you  the  Pamir?    You  ought  to  go  to  Fano." 

"At  K ,"  answered  Fourgues,  "they  said  Anti- 
paxos!" 

"It's  the  Marguerite  which  should  go  to  Anti- 
paxos. We  have  been  calling  all  night." 

"But  look,  commander,  I  have  no  wireless!" 

"Yes,  I  see.  All  you  water-bruisers  are  alike! 
Well,  come  along,  follow  me.  How  much  coal  have 
you?" 

"Fifteen  hundred  tons." 

"Good!  You  are  to  coal  the  cruiser  Lamartine, 
there  behind  the  point." 

"Yes,  but  the  top  of  my  hold  has  briquettes  for 
torpedo-boats!" 

This  did  not  make  the  commander  of  the  destroyer 
any  more  serene.  He  reflected  awhile  and  then  swore. 

"Well,  so  much  the  worse.  The  Lamartine  has 
been  waiting  since  yesterday  and  she  has  to  sail  north 
to-day.  She'll  take  your  briquettes  and  to-morrow 
you  can  give  your  lump  coal  to  some  other." 

"All  right,"  said  Fourgues. 
28 


THE  PAMIR  IS  DISOBEDIENT 

And  without  ever  anchoring  we  started  for  the 
Lamartine,  which  was  adrift  behind  the  point. 

At  a  thousand  yards  they  made  us  stop  because 
an  officer  from  on  board  was  coming  over  in  a  launch 
to  assist  in  the  manoeuvre.  They  might  just  as  well 
have  kept  him.  We  have  only  one  screw,  not  three 
like  a  cruiser,  and  the  Pamir,  with  three  thousand 
tons  in  her  holds,  won't  turn  like  a  top.  But  the 
officer  wanted  to  mix  in.  Fourgues  began  by  spilling 
over  and  was  told  that  in  time  of  war  the  merchant 
marine  must  contain  itself.  When  he  saw  that  things 
were  not  going  to  be  serious,  he  let  the  officer  go 
ahead. 

"Go  ahead!  Astern!  Hard  astarboard!  But  your 
ship  doesn't  obey!  Astern!  Astern!  My  God — " 

Boom!  You  bet  she  stopped,  the  old  Pamir!  It 
was  lucky  the  Lamartine  was  armored!  Otherwise 
we  should  have  walked  right  into  her  as  far  as  the 
steps  of  the  masts!  Anyway,  we  rammed  her.  We 
broke  the  two  first  hawsers,  new  steel  ones,  and  we 
scraped  her  a  little.  And,  oh,  my!  what  knobby  things 
you  have  sticking  out  all  over  your  boats  —  turrets, 
guns,  catheads,  bridges! 

I  The  Pamir  struck  some  of  these  with  her  star- 
board lifeboat  which  tumbled  between  us  and 
cracked  like  a  nut.  This  deadened  the  shock  some- 
what, but  our  davits  were  twisted  and  we  can't 
hang  another  lifeboat  up  there  in  a  hurry. 

The  cruiser  began  to  load  her  coal  at  seven  in  the 
morning  and  by  three  in  the  afternoon,  taking  out 

29 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

time  for  lunch,  had  swallowed  her  thousand  tons, 
briquettes  first,  lumps  next.  How  the  crew  did  it  I 
don't  see.  Only  think,  they  had  thirty  days  of  cruising 
in  their  legs  and  yet  they  grubbed  that  out  in  seven 
hours!  If  you  have  that  kind  on  the  Auvergne  you 
can  be  proud  of  them.  What  I  want  to  know  is  if  your 
naval  constructors  spent  their  time  trying  to  invent 
complications  for  the  entrance  of  the  coal.  They  cer- 
tainly never  could  have  handled  coal  themselves  or 
they  would  have  arranged  things  differently.  Now, 
it  is  as  though  in  moving  into  a  house  you  tried  to 
put  the  furniture  down  the  chimney. 

I  wanted  to  follow  a  load  of  coal  from  the  hold 
of  the  Pamir  into  the  hold  of  the  Lamartine,  but  it 
would  have  been  worth  as  much  to  find  the  exit  of 
the  maze  at  the  Crystal  Palace  —  only  it  was  dirtier. 

And  then,  do  you  too  trail  your  coal  around  in 
hampers,  like  those  in  which  the  negroes  of  the 
Antilles  carry  bananas?  It  is  like  trying  to  empty 
the  Mississippi  with  a  cocktail  straw.  The  hampers 
break  —  this  'breaks  the  backs  of  the  men —  and  as 
for  dust  —  !  The  English  and  the  Germans  do  better 
than  this,  it  must  be  admitted.  With  their  trans- 
porter (temperly)  the  coal  rises  like  an  elevator  and 
their  ways  of  getting  into  the  hold  are  less  outlandish. 
I  await  details  from  you,  for  perhaps  I  am  mistaken. 

The  Lamartine  sent  us  to  anchor  for  the  night  on  a 
plateau  of  rocks,  saying  that  another  cruiser  would 
come  on  the  following  day  to  take  what  was  left. 
Hardly  time  to  say  Ugh !  and  she  was  gone  in  the  fog. 

30 


AN  IONIAN  SUNSET 

Fourgues  anchored  and  in  a  hurry,  very  glad  to  draw 
breath  and  smoke  a  pipe  in  peace. 

We  cleaned  up  and  he  had  half  a  gill  of  marc  sent 
to  the  bridge,  which  we  took  in  coffee  to  get  the  coal 
out  of  our  mouths,  and  then  we  chatted  till  supper. 
The  fog  lifted  for  the  sunset  and  we  were  both  struck 
dumb.  You  are  lucky  to  be  seeing,  that  every  even- 
ing! Fourgues  wanted  to  be  offish  and  say  that  in  the 
Rhone  Valley  and  at  Marseilles,  on  the  days  of  the 
mistral,  the  sunsets  are  better  than  that.  He  bragged 
about  them.  As  for  me,  I  know  this  beat  the  An- 
tilles and  the  Gulf  of  Bengal.  There  was  not  more 
light  and  not  as  bright  colors,  but  it  was  like  velvet. 
And  is  n't  it  good  of  me  to  tell  you  all  about  it  when 
you  have  seen  it  every  night  for  three  months!  But 
I  shall  be  happy  to  go  back  there  again  to  look  at 
those  sunsets  while  I  think  of  home. 

The  next  morning  we  expected  a  cruiser  for  our 
lump  coal.  There  arrived  a  small  squadron  of  de- 
stroyers who  hooked  themselves  together  around  the 
Pamir.  It  was  nicely  manoeuvred  —  a  cable  here  and 
a  fender  there,  and  there  they  were,  like  good  chil- 
dren, all  fast,  lashed  forward  and  aft.  The  chief  of  the 
squadron  boarded  us  and  asked  for  Fourgues.  He 
could  n't  have  had  his  boots  off  for  a  long  time  nor 
washed  either.  His  beard  was  full  of  cinders,  his  eyes 
red.  When  he  found  out  that  the  Lamartine  had 
taken  the  special  coal  and  that  there  was  nothing 
for  him  but  the  left-over,  he  made  a  row:  — 

"This  is  the  third  time!  It  fouls  my  gratings  and 
81 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

it  smokes  like  hell!  And  they  want  us  to  make 
twenty-five  knots  with  that  dirt!" 

But  it  seemed  that  he  must  get  off  at  noon  in  order 
to  go  on  patrol  duty  in  the  evening  —  I  forget  where 
—  and  so  he  had  to  take  the  coal.  Those  fellows  on 
the  destroyers,  I  pity  them  even  more  than  the  ones 
on  the  cruisers.  They  have  n't  room  to  stir  hand  or 
foot,  and  what  a  dog's  life! 

We  had  a  hundred  tons  of  coal  left  when  our  six 
little  boats  had  finished.  Fourgues  would  have  liked 
very  much  to  return  empty,  for  it  does  n't  look  well 
to  carry  freight  back.  But  there  was  no  ship  needing 
coal  for  five  days,  and  as  it  was  hardly  worth  while 
for  the  Pamir  to  go  north  with  so  little,  the  com- 
mander-in-chief ordered  us  by  wireless  (received  by  the 
chief  of  the  squadron)  to  proceed  to  our  destination. 

"You  see,  my  boy,"  said  Fourgues,  "the  cruisers 
took  the  coal  intended  for  the  destroyers  and  the 
destroyers  the  coal  for  the  cruisers.  Such  is  life." 

The  destroyers  gone,  we  crammed  our  ballast  in 
forward,  for  you  can  see  that  our  twenty-five  hundred 
bales  of  cotton  would  sink  us  at  the  stern,  and  set 
out  for  Liverpool.  It  was  a  pleasant  saunter.  Four- 
gues had  no  fear  of  lacking  coal  with  the  hundred 
tons  we  were  carrying  gratis,  and  there  were  three 
of  us  for  the  watch,  including  the  bonhomme  of  the 
Paris  boats,  who,  by  the  way,  has  a  little  list  of  stories 
that  beat  Fourgues'. 

At  Liverpool  the  pilot  delivered  a  telegram  from 
the  owner,  who  said  that  according  to  agreement  with 

32 


THE  COTTON  GOING  TO  COPENHAGEN 

the  consignee,  we  must  hand  our  cotton  over  to  the 
Karl  Kristian,  a  big  Norwegian  cargo  boat,  moored 
before  Birkenhead.  When  we  had  been  able  to  moor 
near  by,  can  you  guess  what  the  captain  said  to 
Fourgues?  I  will  give  you  a  thousand  chances!  That 
the  Karl  Kristian  was  going  to  carry  our  twenty- 
five  hundred  bales  with  four  thousand  more  to  Copen- 
hagen! Do  you  think  that  stuff  is  going  to  stay  in 
Denmark?  This  was  the  first  time  Fourgues  got  into 

a  rage  since  K and  he  said  that  if  he  had  known, 

he  would  have  pitched  it  all  overboard  in  Morocco 
and  carried  furniture  for  a  hundred  thousand  Boches, 
rather  than  to  hand  them  on  a  platter  material  with 
which  to  furnish  shells  for  an  army  corps.  You  must 
have  read  the  articles  of  the  Hague  Conference,  old 
man,  on  your  battleship,  so  if  you  can  tell  why  it  is 
forbidden  to  sell  coal  to  the  Boches  and  why  cotton  is 
not  contraband  of  war,  you  will  please  both  Four- 
gues and  me.  If  the  Germans  were  in  our  place  on 
the  sea  and  we  in  theirs,  I  think  an  embargo  on 
cotton  would  not  have  been  so  long  delayed. 

The  Pamir  didn't  have  time  to  get  mouldy  be- 
fore Birkenhead.  During  the  day  the  Karl  Kristian 
scraped  out  our  twenty-five  hundred  bales,  and  Four- 
gues profited  by  the  occasion  to  have  the  construc- 
tor's diver  —  the  Pamir  was  built  there  —  examine 
our  screw,  which  did  not  seem  to  be  turning  as  it 
should.  It  was  then  that  we  learned  that  a  good 
chunk  of  metal  from  the  screw  was  lying  in  the  At- 
lantic, as  well  as  three  nuts  broken  off  from  the  nave. 

33 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Fourgues  would  have  liked  to  have  it  repaired  then 
and  there,  but  the  shop  told  him  that  they  were  over- 
run because  the  Admiralty  was  rushing  construction, 
and  so  if  the  Pamir  could  go  as  far  as  Cardiff,  we 
should  find  another  screw  at  their  branch  establish- 
ment and  some  one  to  set  it.  As  it  is  only  a  short 
promenade  we  left  that  evening  in  ballast,  and  this 
morning  they  stuck  her  nose  down  and  installed  a  raft 
under  the  screw,  just  at  water-level.  To-morrow  they 
will  be  through.  We  shall  load  with  coal  and  get  off 
again. 

As  there  was  nothing  to  do  while  this  work  was 
going  on,  Fourgues  gave  a  holiday  to  the  whole 
bunch,  who  did  not  need  to  be  told  twice,  and  in- 
vited me  to  dinner  at  the  Welsh  Lino!  It  cheered 
us  up  to  drink  fresh  beer  and  eat  fresh  bread.  As  we 
were  in  such  a  good  humor,  I  read  him  your  letter 
from  Malta  which  I  had  had  in  my  pocket  ever  since 
Liverpool.  I  hope  you  don't  mind,  for  he  said: 
"They  are  lucky  on  the  Auvergne.  With  a  young 
chap  like  that  on  the  bridge  the  commander  ought 
to  be  able  to  sleep  on  both  ears." 

Believe  me,  it  made  him  sit  up  to  learn  that  you 
watch  in  a  turret  and  that  when  you  set  foot  on  the 
bridge  you  have  n't  the  right  to  speak!  All  that  you 
wrote  interested  him  greatly.  Fourgues  has  a  brusque 
manner,  appears  rather  offish,  and  talks  little  except 
to  swear;  but  when  he  really  unbuttons,  there  is 
nothing  to  do  but  listen,  for  I  have  observed  that 
sooner  or  later  you  find  he  has  been  in  the  right. 

34 


NAVAL  WARFARE  NOT  ALL  GUNS 

"Your  friend's  letter  is  not  bad,"  he  said  when  I 
had  finished.  "He  is  interested  in  what  he  is  doing 
and  there  is  n't  anything  but  that,  outside  of  home 
and  family.  But  he  seems  to  me  to  believe  that 
the  thing  is  being  accomplished  on  the  Auvergne. 
The  environment  encourages  that.  And  he  believes 
in  nothing  but  the  guns  and  dreams  of  nothing  but 
wounds  and  bruises.  Very  good,  but  just  the  same, 
see  if  there  is  n't  something  beside  cannon  in  this 
naval  warfare!  By  the  way  things  are  going,  I  have 
a  sort  of  an  idea  that  the  Germans  don't  understand 
it  that  way.  As  for  the  Austrians!  Well,  we  shall  see. 
Come  on,  kid,  let's  play  pool  and  have  a  drink  of 
whiskey.  That  will  loosen  up  our  fingers  and  legs. 
You  can  tell  me  what  you  think  of  the  letter  and  see 
if  we  agree." 

You  know  I  play  billiards  like  a  fool,  especially 
on  those  enormous  English  billiard-tables.  Fourgues 
gave  me  a  hundred  points  on  five  hundred  and  won 
in  seven  innings.  I  stood  around  and  watched  him 
do  it  and  never  saw  him  look  so  pleased.  I  tried  to 
get  in  a  few  words  about  your  letter,  but  he  held  the 
floor  the  entire  time.  I  can't  tell  you  everything 
from  A  to  Z,  for  it  lasted  an  hour,  but  he  asked  a  lot 
of  questions  and  as  I  eould  not  answer  them  —  "Ask 
your  gunner,"  he  would  say,  "this  and  that  and  the 
other"  —  chalking  his  cue. 

And  so,  old  man,  I  obey,  and  you  may  respond 
directly  to  Fourgues  if  you  wish.  I  shan't  be  jealous 
and  it  will  please  him. 

35 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"One  of  two  things,"  he  said  —  "either  the  navy 
will  fight  the  Austrians  or  it  won't.  If  it's  going  to, 
why  blockade  the  Strait  of  Otranto?  If  you  want 
to  shoot  a  rabbit,  you  let  him  come  out  of  his  hole 
first,  then  you  get  between  the  hole  and  the  rabbit 
and  then  you  fire!  But  you  don't  get  in  front  of  the 
hole  in  the  first  place  or  he  won't  come  out.  I  don't 
know  where  the  Austrians  are,  —  at  Pola  or  Cattaro 
or  somewhere  else,  —  but  I  know  they're  not  going 
to  come  out  with  our  navy  promenading  up  and  down 
in  front  of  them,  four  to  one.  It  would  be  better  if 
we  were  to  stay  in  some  port  near  by,  with  only  one 
or  two  ships  in  the  Strait,  —  which  is  not  so  broad, 
—  and  let  them  make  a  sortie  if  they  want  to  and 
then  fall  on  them. 

"The  thing  would  be  decided  in  an  hour  and  the 
blockade  would  be  over.  Instead  of  that,  we  wear 
out  our  ships  and  our  men  while  the  Austrians  remain 
at  home,  keeping  up  their  machines  and  their  marks- 
manship so  as  to  be  fresh  and  ready  for  the  day  when 
it  comes. 

"And  what  good  does  it  do  to  go  up  and  down  the 
Adriatic  all  togged  out?  Everybody  knows  that  now- 
adays warships  can't  get  near  an  enemy  coast  be- 
cause of  the  mines.  The  commander  of  the  Lamartine 
told  me  the  other  day  that  they  ought  not  to  pass  a 
hundred  metres  depth  and  that  means  from  ten  to 
twenty  or  thirty  miles  at  sea.  They  certainly  won't 
bombard  the  Austrian  arsenals  and  invade  Austria 
from  that  distance.   All  they  '11  get  will  be  a  floating 

36 


FOURGUES  ON  NAVAL  TACTICS 

mine  or  a  torpedo  from  a  submarine.  I  can't  see 
any  other  result.  With  the  idea  at  bottom  of  fighting, 
they  all  seem  to  me  to  be  doing  their  utmost  not  to 
get  there.  What 's  more,  if  you  have  read  the  English 
papers,  you  can  see  that  it's  the  same  over  there. 
Well,  who  lives,  learns.  Write  all  that  to  your  friend 
with  a  greeting  from  me  and  ask  him  what  they  think 
about  it  on  the  Auvergne  and  the  other  ships.  Per- 
haps it  is  the  idea  of  an  old  rough-and-ready  who 
has  n't  been  wearing  out  the  books  on  tactics,  but 
it  ought  not  to  be  far  from  the  truth." 

Fourgues  said  a  lot  more,  but  I  have  had  enough 
for  to-day.  To-morrow  three  thousand  tons  of  coal 
and  en  route  by  night!  If  we  have  no  new  instruc- 
tions we  go  back  to  coal  the  fleet.  But  perhaps  a 
telegram  will  come  during  the  day.  Good-bye,  old 
man.  I  'm  going  up  to  play  the  mandolin  on  the  deck 
and  you  can  be  sure  I  shan't  be  thinking  of  you! 

Alexandria,  February  12 
My  dear  Friend,  — 

I  hope  you  will  forgive  me  for  not  writing  in 
so  long,  even  at  New  Year.  You  know  that  I've 
thought  of  you,  but  honestly,  I  've  not  been  having 
time  to  get  mouldy !  If  I  'm  not  mistaken  my  last  let- 
ter was  from  Cardiff  and  we  were  expecting  to  leave 
for  the  Strait  of  Otranto.  But  the  counter-order  came. 
The  English  fleet  needs  a  lot  of  coalers  in  the  North 
Sea  and  has  none  of  its  own.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  war   they  took  for  their  motto  "Business  as 

37 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

usual,"  and  the  youms1  let  the  patrol-boats  carry 
on  the  commerce  in  order  not  to  disturb  anything. 
But  as  the  war  kept  dragging  out,  they  could  no 
longer  guarantee  supplies  everywhere,  so,  in  short, 
the  Pamir  was  sent  to  Senegal,  Togoland,  and  the 
Cameroon,  where  there  is  a  French-English  squad- 
ron which  needed  coal. 

At  first  everything  went  well,  but  off  Cape  Finis- 
terre  we  had  a  hard  wind.  The  Pamir  was  loaded 
to  the  gunwales  and  you  should  have  seen  her!  The 
decks  were  washed  for  thirty-six  hours.  The  trouble 
was  that  the  shaft  was  up  to  its  old  tricks,  and  we  saw 

that  the  muff  repaired  at  K was  going  to  give  us 

the  slip  right  in  the  middle  of  the  storm.  Fourgues 
reduced  speed  as  much  as  possible  and  not  get 
into  the  trough  of  the  sea  and  made  for  Cadiz  to 
have  the  collars  manufactured  by  Muriac  put  in  place 
again.  The  repairs  did  n't  go  at  all  smoothly  because 
my  men  couldn't  understand  a  word  and  myself 
hardly  more.  We  profited  by  the  occasion  to  lay  in 
water  and  provisions.  Really,  it's  not  amusing  to  be 
a  Frenchman  in  Spain  at  present.  They  looked  side- 
ways at  us  and  laughed  behind  our  backs.  The  Boches 
are  well  installed,  the  Government  supports  them, 
while  Fourgues  was  rather  badly  received.  And  then 
all  the  French  had  been  called  home  at  the  mobiliza- 
tion —  there  is  no  one  left  to  represent  us.  All  our 
affairs  there  are  going  to  the  dogs.  The  Boches  pro- 
fit by  this.  They  are  getting  ready  for  the  end  of  the 
i  The  English. 
38 


CRUISING  ON  THE  WEST-AFRICAN  COAST 

war,  seriously.  And  don't  think  for  a  minute  that 
they  all  stay  there!  There  are  big  vessels  full  of 
Germans  sailing  from  Barcelona  and  Cadiz,  which 
go  to  neutral  countries  and  from  there  to  Germany. 
We  could  make  a  big  sweep  if  we  went  after  them. 
I  hope  you'll  tell  me  if  any  have  been  taken.  You 
ought  to  know.  As  for  me,  I  don't  know  much.  I  have 
my  hands  full  on  board  and  the  papers  say  such 
stupid  things,  and  then,  once  you  have  left  land  you 
think  of  other  things.  But  you  only  have  to  walk 
along  the  docks  there  to  see  the  boats  sailing  with  the 
Boches.  With  some  one  to  give  information,  France 
could  know  the  hour  and  the  day  of  sailing  and  a 
warship  could  gather  them  in  as  they  left  Spanish 
waters. 

After  that  the  Pamir  went  down  to  Dakar.  Then 
we  took  in  the  whole  coast,  Goree,  Sierra  Leone, 
Porto  Novo,  —  leaving  a  little  coal  everywhere, 
sometimes  on  a  gunboat,  sometimes  on  a  cruiser  or  at 
a  dock.  It  reminded  me  of  the  old  trading  voyages 
when  they  made  little  trips  from  port  to  port  to  un- 
load three  tons  and  take  on  a  hundred  hogsheads. 
Only,  this  time,  nothing  doing  with  merchandise! 
There  were  bales  and  bananas  and  ivory  every- 
where, more  than  I  can  tell,  waiting  to  be  shipped. 
Fourgues  is  devoured  with  despair  to  see  all  that 
moulding  when  the  Pamir  has  room  enough  to  clean 
up  the  entire  coast.  But  he  asked  in  vain.  He  was 
refused  everywhere  because  he  was  in  the  Govern- 
ment service,  so  we  returned  empty.  With  the  ba- 

39 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

nanas  alone  we  could  have  paid  for  our  return  voyage. 
All  that  stuff  was  going  to  a  neutral  port  and  from 
there  I  know  very  well  where! 

We  saw  a  lot  of  people  down  there  who  asked  for 
news  and  details.  Fourgues'  preserves  and  marc  were 
all  used  up  because  he  invited  so  many  of  the  poor 
devils  who  were  homesick.  There  are  some  who  have 
had  three  or  four  years  in  Africa  and  it  was  their 
turn  to  come  home.  Now  they  are  obliged  to  stay 
on.  It  seems  that  things  are  going  well  and  that 
Togoland  and  the  Cameroon  will  not  take  long.  But 
the  Boches  prepared  their  stroke  with  a  long  hand, 
for  away  off  down  in  the  bush,  cannon  and  machine- 
guns  of  the  latest  model  were  found  and  heaps  of 
ammunition.  In  spite  of  this,  everybody  said  that  the 
country  would  soon  be  cleared,  which  will  make  two 
fine  colonies  the  less  for  them.  The  English  got  a 
number  of  their  boats,  and  the  naval  officers  with 
whom  we  talked  said  that  that  would  make  a  fine 
lump  of  prize-money.  When  we  told  them  that 
with  us  since  the  war,  prize-money  has  been  sup- 
pressed, and  gratuities  and  the  rest,  they  would  n't 
believe  us.  As  they  said,  the  laborer  is  worthy  of  his 
hire,  and  one  is  more  apt  to  hustle  if  there  is  some 
sort  of  recompense  ahead.  There  was  even  one  who 
said  that  we  were  idiots  and  that  we  should  be  obliged 
to  go  back  to  it.  Fourgues  wanted  to  get  after  him, 
but  it  was  only  half-hearted,  for  he  had  already  told 
me  that  he  thought  the  same. 

On  going  back  to  Dakar  we  were  ordered  to  touch 
40 


LOADING  FOR  MONTENEGRO 

at  Casablanca  to  await  instructions.  We  thought  it 
was  going  to  be  like  last  August,  but  not  at  all!  There 
were  two  thousand  tons  of  cereals  waiting  to  be  taken 
to  Montenegro.  We  loaded  it  from  barcasses,  like 
the  furniture  of  the  Boches,  only  we  stowed  it  bet- 
ter I  In  the  middle  of  December  there  is  something 
like  a  swell.  I  kept  saying,  "  Qa  y  est !  That  barcasse  is 
going  over  in  the  surf!"  —  and  then  it  did  n't  after 
all.  They  know  how  to  turn  the  trick,  those  Arabs. 
Fourgues  was  pleased  to  have  a  load  and  not  to  be 
returning  in  ballast.  He  was  afraid,  though,  that 
they  would  n't  send  us  to  Montenegro  after  all. 

"You'll  see,  my  boy.  They'll  make  us  unload  all 
that  and  go  back  for  coal." 

He  doesn't  like  coal  because,  he  says,  although 
it  keeps  the  teeth  white  and  is  good  for  the  stomach, 
it  is  impossible  to  have  clean  shirts  and  handker- 
chiefs. But  we  were  sent  to  Oran  to  complete  our 
load  with  shoes,  blankets,  and  all  sorts  of  material 
for  clothing.  They  must  be  awfully  up  against  it  in 
Montenegro. 

Finally  the  Pamir  spent  several  hours  at  Bizerta, 
getting  gasoline  for  the  Montenegrin  army.  Even 
though  we  did  n't  mould  in  any  of  the  ports,  all  this 
took  time,  and  in  the  worst  season  too.  I  should  never 
have  believed  that  the  Mediterranean  was  so  bad. 
It  is  worse  than  the  Atlantic  and  the  China  Sea:  rain 
or  wind,  wind  or  rain,  and  a  choppy  sea  all  the  time. 
Fourgues  takes  it  and  laughs  at  me:  — 

"Eh,  my  boy!  You  see  it's  a  mistake  to  run  down 
41 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  Midi!  The  Mediterranean  is  only  a  cup,  but  it 
takes  clever  folks  to  go  up  and  down  it  without 
getting  into  something  nasty.  Now  look  at  that  — 
and  that!" 

I  can  understand  waves  as  high  as  the  smoke- 
stack where  they  have  space  in  which  to  pile  up,  but 
to  find  such  in  the  Mediterranean  is  too  much  for 
me.  You,  old  man,  have  some  peace  in  your  turret, 
but  the  bridge  of  the  Pamir  is  seldom  dry. 

Our  rendezvous  was  for  ten  miles  west  of  Fano  and 
the  Pamir  arrived  about  noon.  From  far  off  we  asked 
ourselves  what  was  going  to  happen.  We  expected 
to  see  a  destroyer  or  perhaps  a  cruiser,  but  not  fifty 
or  sixty  of  you!  We  could  see  smoke  for  thirty  miles, 
and  all  the  time  other  boats  kept  coming  along.  It 
was  the  first  time  I  had  seen  the  fleet  out  in  full  force, 
battleships,  cruisers,  and  torpedo-boats.  It  is  a  fine 
sight!  I  looked  for  the  Auvergne,  but  she  wasn't 
there.  What  were  you  doing?  I  was  so  interested 
watching  the  wigwagging,  the  flags,  and  all  the  little 
boats  going  from  one  ship  to  another,  that  I  forgot 
to  write  you  a  word  during  the  half-hour  we  stopped 
in  the  middle  of  the  lot.  I  was  asking  myself  what 
you  were  all  doing  there,  quiet  and  idle,  and  it  was 
only  at  the  end  that  I  saw  the  mail-boat  which  had 
been  hidden  by  a  big  cruiser,  and  understood  why 
there  were  so  many  small  craft  running  about.  Well, 
your  admiral  isn't  afraid,  is  he,  to  stay  there  all 
together,  under  the  noses  of  the  Greeks! 

As  soon  as  we  had  stopped,  a  steam  launch  came 
42 


SEALED  ORDERS 

for  Fourgues  and  took  him  aboard  the  admiral's  ship, 
where  he  did  n't  stay  fifteen  minutes.  When  he  came 
back,  he  climbed  the  ladder  in  a  hurry. 

"  Get  under  way  at  once,  my  boy,  —  head  north. 
Put  yourself  behind  that  destroyer  while  I  read  my 
orders." 

He  went  to  open  his  sealed  envelope  and  I  pro- 
ceeded behind  the  destroyer  all  by  myself,  proud  as 
could  be  in  the  midst  of  all  that  steel.  Nevertheless, 
it  was  annoying  not  to  have  known  that  we  should 
run  upon  the  mail-boat.  You  can  get  along,  but  at 
home  they  will  think  I  have  been  drowned,  for  they 
have  been  a  month  without  a  letter. 

When  Fourgues  returned  to  the  bridge  I  expected 
him  to  tell  me  about  it,  and  I  began:  — 

"Well,  Captain?" 

"Keep  straight  ahead,  my  boy." 

He  stood  near  the  taximeter,  frowning  and  tap- 
ping on  the  rail.  I  could  see  that  he  was  disturbed, 
but  there  was  no  use  mixing  in.  I  should  only  have 
caught  it,  whereas,  as  he  has  no  one  but  me  to  talk 
to,  it  was  all  sure  to  come  out  before  a  great  while. 

He  went  down  again  and  gave  orders  for  doubling 
the  watch  —  two  men  forward,  one  aft.  Then  he  said 
that  as  we  were  going  up  and  down  the  Adriatic 
again  he  and  I  should  keep  watch  en  chef  with  the 
others  to  support  us  except  during  meals,  which  we 
should  continue  to  eat  together,  but  in  the  naviga- 
tion-room. Afterwards  he  ruminated  without  an- 
other syllable  until  dinner. 

43 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

I  didn't  say  a  word,  but  I  was  beginning  to  be 
stunned  by  this  reserve  just  at  the  moment  when  he 
was  surely  going  to  do  something  interesting.  He 
is  more  apt  to  be  headlong.  Finally  he  exploded:  — 

"Well,  anyway,  we  must  consult.  Say,  kid,  do  you 
know  what  they  asked  me  on  that  battleship?" 

No  danger  of  my  opening  my  mouth! 

"Well,  they  asked  me  why  I  did  n't  have  wireless, 
and  why  I  did  n't  have  a  lookout  on  the  masthead, 
and  where  was  my  row  of  signal  lights,  and  how  was 
I  going  to  communicate  with  them  at  night  and  with 
the  destroyers,  and  why  this  and  why  that!  Good 
God,  they  have  only  to  give  the  order!  I  should  ask 
nothing  better  than  to  have  the  Pamir  rigged  with  all 
the  apparatus  in  creation  and  with  new  boilers  and 
a  whole  shaft  into  the  bargain!  But  think  of  it!  To 
act  as  though  they  had  caught  me  napping!  I 'm  not 
a  battleship!  Well,  then  I  turned  in  and  asked  one  of 
them  who  was  still  putting  it  up  to  me  —  a  little 
fellow  off  a  frigate  — 

"'And  you?  What  are  you  doing  stock-still  here? 
Are  you  waiting  for  a  torpedo?' 

"He  began  to  laugh  and  called  some  others  and 
they  looked  me  over  as  though  I  were  a  strange  ani- 
mal. There  was  one  who  condescended  to  explain 
that  submarines  were  for  coast-defence  and  would 
never  in  the  world  descend  as  far  as  Fano;  that 
it  was  n't  necessary  to  imagine  horrors  —  one  could 
sail  quite  safely.  Farther  up,  perhaps,  it  would  be 
as  well  to  keep  one's  eyes  open,  but  on  the  sea  — 

44 


FOURGUES  AND  THE  BATTLESHIP  OFFICERS 

it  was  a  joke!  But  it  was  a  little  too  strong,  just  the 
same,  for  them  to  think  that  I  was  afraid!  I  don't 
know  what  I  said,  but  the  admiral  came:  — 

"'Oh  here  is  the  commander  of  the  Pamir,  who 
is  going  to  Montenegro!  You  are  luckier  than  I! 
But  surely  you  are  n't  afraid!' 

"I  was  going  to  answer,  but  he  went  away  before 
I  had  time,  and  as  soon  as  they  had  given  me  my 
sealed  orders  I  came  right  back.  Here  I  know  what 
I  am  doing  and  no  one  tries  to  give  me  lessons!  Let 
them  grant  me  the  wireless!  I  have  asked  the  owner 
for  it  ten  times  and  every  time  he  looks  at  me  as 
though  I  were  asking  for  the  moon!  Oh,  yes,  —  I 
forgot.  On  the  gangway  there  was  a  little  naval 
lieutenant.  I  asked  him  what  I  was  to  do  if  I  saw  a 
submarine  —  should  I  go  after  it  with  my  fists?  He 
too  looked  at  me  as  though  I  were  a  freak  and 
shrugged  his  shoulders  and  went  back  to  laugh  with 
the  rest  of  them.   Can't  you  just  see  it?" 

It  did  Fourgues  good  to  relieve  his  mind.  He  lit 
his  pipe  and  swallowed  a  glass  of  good  rum  from  the 
Antilles. 

"Go  to  bed,  kid,  and  try  till  midnight  to  get  some 
sleep,  for  to-morrow  you  can't  count  on  any.  We 
are  going  to  Antivari,  to  arrive  at  night  and  set  out 
again  the  next  morning  and  all  the  stuff  has  to  be 
unloaded.  Fortunately  the  nights  are  long.  They  '11 
see  if  old  man  Fourgues  has  turnip  juice  in  his 
veins!" 

It  is  not  exactly  gay  going  up  the  coast  of  Albania. 
45 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

There  is  about  as  much  vegetation  as  on  my  hand, 
and  when  the  wind  begins  to  swoop  down  from  the 
heights,  it's  no  laughing  matter.  We  caught  one  of 
those  hard  winds  that  are  enough  to  pull  the  masts 
up  by  the  roots.  I  don't  know  what  the  destroyer 
did  to  keep  from  capsizing.  Every  time  we  could  see 
her  between  waves  she  was  over  on  one  side  or  the 
other.  As  for  the  Pamir,  she  has  had  so  much  of  that 
sort  of  thing  that  it  does  n't  even  take  off  any  paint 
—  because  she  has  n't  any  left! 

By  hugging  the  coast  we  arrived  at  Antivari  the 
next  day,  the  destroyer  ahead  showing  the  route. 
The  wind  fell,  but  still  it  wasn't  exactly  fine  and 
there  was  not  so  much  as  a  candle  for  light.  Fourgues 
went  in  as  though  it  were  broad  day,  but  really  we 
could  see  neither  the  coast  nor  the  wharf.  You  would 
have  believed  he  was  going  into  the  basin  of  the 
Eure  at  Havre  with  a  tug  in  front  and  another  behind. 

All  the  same,  there  was  a  crowd  on  the  dock,  Monte- 
negrins who  caught  our  ropes  and  were  not  too  stupid 
about  winding  them.  The  Pamir  was  able  to  turn 
and  didn't  smash  anything  in  coming  alongside. 
The  natives  leaped  on  board  like  devils.  They  must 
have  asked  for  something  to  eat  in  their  lingo,  for  as 
we  got  out  the  first  bags  of  corn  they  fell  on  them 
and  filled  their  pockets. 

As  night  work,  I  recommend  that!  Not  allowed 
to  light  a  torch,  not  allowed  to  use  the  winch,  not 
allowed  to  shout!  Just  pitch  everything  over  onto 
the  dock  without  knowing  where  it  will  fall  —  so 

46 


UNLOADING  AT  ANTIVARI 

much  the  worse  for  any  one  who  is  underneath! 
Those  who  were  on  land  grabbed  the  stuff  as  well 
as  they  could  and  dragged  it  into  the  sheds  —  gaso- 
line, shoes,  blankets,  sacks  of  corn.  We  did  n't  kill 
any  one,  though  I  don't  see  why  not,  nor  did  the 
Austrian  aviators  who  came  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  and  dropped  four  or  five  bombs  which  burst 
all  around  —  excepting  one  which  fell  into  our  corn 
without  going  off  and  which  Fourgues  threw  over- 
board as  though  it  were  a  cigarette  stump.  As  soon 
as  they  heard  the  airplanes,  all  the  natives  ran  like 
rabbits,  and  there  was  no  way  of  getting  them  to 
come  back.  Behold  those  who  love  their  food  all 
served!  The  destroyer  sent  us  some  men,  and  al- 
though they  must  have  longed  for  sleep  after  the 
dog's  life  of  these  last  few  days,  nevertheless,  they 
dragged  the  things  out  as  though  it  were  for  them- 
selves. That's  what  one  might  call  pulling  chestnuts 
out  of  the  fire  I  At  five  in  the  morning  the  hold  was 
empty  and  scraped  and  the  Pamir  left  without  wait- 
ing for  anything  more.  The  destroyer,  having  re- 
ceived a  radio  during  the  night,  was  to  remain,  so 
she  put  out  to  wander  around  the  neighborhood, 
and  we  went  down  the  Adriatic  without  being 
convoyed.  If  a  hydroplane  with  a  carbine  had  fired 
on  us,  we  should  simply  have  been  prisoners,  and 
would  n't  that  have  looked  nice!  Fourgues  grumbled, 
saying  that  a  ship  of  three  thousand  tons  is  worth 
taking  and  that  France  is  not  rich  enough  to  let  them 
go  in  enemy  waters  like  that. 

47 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

But  we  had  no  orders,  so  Fourgues  was  wondering 
whether  to  return  to  Cardiff  or  go  to  Toulon,  or 
what.  In  short,  life  on  the  bridge  was  far  from  amus- 
ing. As  a  climax,  a  crank  got  hot.  We  had  to  slow 
down  to  three  knots  and  turn  the  hose  on  it.  There 
was  time  for  us  to  be  sunk  ten  times  over,  for  it  took 
fifty  hours  to  get  back,  with  bad  weather  and  head 
winds. 

Fourgues  wanted  to  go  inside  at  Corfu  for  quiet 
water  and  to  anchor  if  the  crank  would  n't  cool  off; 
but  just  as  we  were  turning  into  the  north  channel,  a 
whole  squadron  of  torpedo-boats  came  along  and  sig- 
nalled for  us  to  go  outside.  They  shouted  through 
the  megaphone  that  French  boats  should  not  go  into 
Greek  waters.  But  the  Pamir  is  not  a  war-vessel. . . . 

They  talked  on.  It  seems  that  the  whole  navy 
believed  the  Pamir  had  been  sunk  or  torpedoed  and 
that  they  had  been  searching  for  us  everywhere  for 
twenty-four  hours.  The  destroyer  which  was  with 
us  at  Antivari  had  received  orders  to  come  back  and 
try  to  find  us,  while  the  others  went  up  en  rideau. 
The  destroyer  started  out  at  full  speed  and  passed 
us  without  seeing  us,  of  course,  because  we  were  hug- 
ging the  coast  for  shelter.  They  got  a  first-rate  call- 
ing down  by  wireless  from  the  commander-in-chief, 
but  Fourgues  was  annoyed,  a  little,  to  learn  of  it. 

"Too  bad!  And  if  they  had  given  us  a  wireless 
it  would  n't  have  happened,"  he  concluded. 

They  were  also  looking  for  us  because  they  wanted 
us  to  go  to  Alexandria,  where  we  arrived  day  before 

48 


AT  ALEXANDRIA 

yesterday.  We  don't  yet  know  why,  but  I  believe 
it  is  because  of  an  expedition  near  Constantinople. 
Fourgues  is  well  pleased,  for,  he  says,  it  will  be 
amusing  to  anchor  as  a  conqueror  where  he  has  an- 
chored so  many  times  with  a  lot  of  junk.  I  only  hope 
it  may  be  so!  He  spends  his  time  now  telling  me 
about  the  Bosphorus  and  the  straits  of  the  Black  Sea 
which  I  have  never  passed. 

He  says  that  with  nerve  the  thing  is  possible  — 
that  we  should  take  them  by  surprise  and  go  right 
in,  and  then  in  three  days  the  Turks  would  be  done 
for.  "Only,"  he  adds,  "it  is  n't  enough  to  say  you 
are  going;  you  have  to  go!" 

We  rest  while  waiting.  The  English  are  very  nice 
and  they  don't  worry  at  Alexandria.  The  crew  are 
improving  the  opportunity!  There  are  a  few  rough- 
necks among  them,  but  Fourgues  shuts  his  eyes  be- 
cause they  have  worked  like  dogs  for  three  months 
and  this  is  the  first  time  there  has  been  any  relaxa- 
tion. 

I  sat  down  to  get  my  letters  ready  for  the  mail-boat, 
as  you  see.  I  wish  I  had  some  books..  Since  the 
month  of  August  I  have  been  thinking  a  great  deal, 
especially  as  Fourgues  has  made  me  see  what  a  lot 
of  things  there  are  that  I  don't  know.  Before,  I  never 
read  anything  but  the  papers,  but  now  I  need  some- 
thing more  serious,  if  only  to  make  conversation 
with  him.  Send  me  a  list  of  books,  old  man,  on  nau- 
tical subjects  and  the  history  of  Europe  and  some 
classics  too.  I  will  buy  them  in  France.  If  you  are  n't 

49 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

cross  at  my  having  abandoned  you  for  so  long,  ship 
me  a  package  of  books  that  you  are  through  with 
and  don't  need  any  more.  Wishing  you  a  happy  New 
Year. 


PART  TWO 

Newcastle,  England 
April  8,  igi5 
Well,  old  man,  we  have  just  been  through 
something  special  in  the  way  of  bad  weather,  up  north 
of  Scotland.  You  must  wonder  what  we  were  doing 
up  there,  as  I  wrote  from  Egypt  that  the  Pamir  was 
going  to  transport  men  to  the  Dardanelles.  As  you 
shall  see,  it's  quite  simple. 

We  remained  at  Alexandria  just  long  enough  to 
like  it  and  to  get  a  few  little  habits  —  movies,  bars, 
etc.  Fourgues  and  I  went  to  Cairo  together  and  to 
the  Pyramids.  You  have  no  idea  how  he  can  talk 
about  all  that.  I  don't  know  where  he  was  ever  able 
to  learn  so  much,  and  no  hot  air,  you  know,  for  I 
bought  a  guide-book  afterwards  to  see  if  it  was  all 
true,  —  the  Pharaohs,  the  Turks,  Bonaparte,  and  all 
that,  —  and  he  had  told  it  all  just  like  the  book.  In 
this  connection  I  want  to  thank  you  for  the  books  you 
sent  me.  You  are  a  real  brother.  I  received  them 
here  day  before  yesterday  and  I  have  begun  with  the 
maritime  history  of  France.  It  is  very  interesting. 
I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  to  you  that  I  don't 
know  much  about  it.  But  after  what  I  have  now 
read,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  always  the  same  story  — 
frigates  or  battleships,  sails  or  steam,  you  could  say 

51 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

it  was  beginning  all  over  again.  Some  day  I  will  tell 
you  at  length  what  I  think  about  it. 

At  Alexandria  our  crew  spent  all  their  savings 
in  four  days  and  made  a  good  deal  of  music  in  the 
streets  and  bars.  The  police  brought  several  back, 
but  Fourgues  would  n't  be  hard  on  them. 

"Leave  them  alone,  my  boy.  Sailors  are  n't  arch- 
angels. Let  the  cops  come  aboard  the  Pamir  for 
three  months  and  see  if  they  drink  seltzer  water 
after  even  that  little  while.  When  our  lascars  have  n't 
a  cent  left,  they'll  be  quiet  and  we'll  give  them  some 
hard  work." 

That's  the  way  with  Fourgues.  At  sea  he  makes 
them  stand  around,  with  blows  if  things  don't  move 
fast  enough.  But  when  there  is  nothing  to  do,  he 
gives  them  a  royal  peace.  I  believe  it's  the  best  way, 
for  all  the  reservists  work  hard,  and  there  is  n't  one 
who  wants  to  leave  the  Pamir,  where,  by  the  way,  we 
never  have  a  drop. 

After  eight  days  in  Alexandria  we  were  ordered 
to  Port  Said.  It  was  on  account  of  a  cargo  boat  from 
Bombay,  loaded  with  Indian  soldiers  for  the  front. 
It  was  having  trouble  with  its  condensers,  and  as  the 
men  must  go  and  as  the  boat  was  in  for  a  fortnight 
of  repairs,  they  took  the  old  Pamir,  being  free,  to 
trundle  the  six  hundred  men.  As  far  as  comfort  goes, 
it  was  pretty  poor.  When  it  comes  to  freight,  the 
Pamir  is  n't  afraid  of  three  thousand  tons  and  even 
a  little  more  crammed  into  the  corners.  But  passes 
gers!  There  is  only  the  deck  and  the  hold,  so  get  out 

52 


SHIPPING  INDIAN  TROOPS  AT  PORT  SAID 

of  it  if  you  can  with  that!  Fourgues  put  two  higher 
officers  in  each  of  the  cabins  of  Blangy  and  Muriac 
and  I  don't  see  how  the  four  managed  to  exist.  You 
know  the  cabins  of  the  Pamir  —  as  bureau-drawers 
they  couldn't  be  better!  The  other  officers,  the 
"subs"  as  the  youms  call  them,  we  installed,  along 
with  the  non-commissioned  officers,  with  the  help  of 
the  boards  which  served  for  the  Boches  last  year.  As 
for  the  rest,  they  were  free  to  stuff  themselves  in 
anywhere,  hold  or  deck,  according  to  preference. 

Fourgues  and  I  had  n't  time  to  arrange  anything 
for  the  poor  devils.  We  were  given  only  twenty-four 
hours'  notice  and  had  to  coal  and  provision.  Think 
of  it!  To  take  six  hundred  men  and  feed  thirty-five 
of  them  and  not  to  know  whether  it  is  to  be  for  ten 
or  for  twenty  days,  because  no  one  could  tell  us 
whether  they  were  going  to  Marseilles,  to  Havre,  or 
to  England!  The  authorities  on  land  at  Port  Said 
told  Fourgues  that  he  would  receive  orders  at  sea  by 
wireless.  When  he  answered  that  he  had  no  wireless, 
there  was  the  usual  ceremony  and  they  handed  it  to 
each  other.  Finally,  they  told  him  to  touch  at  Mar- 
seilles for  instructions  and  that  there  they  would  tell 
him  what  to  do.  Fourgues  profited  by  the  incident 
to  telegraph  the  owner  and  demand  that  we  be  fitted 
with  wireless  in  a  hurry  because  he  had  had  enough 
of  being  raked  over  the  coals  as  though  it  were  his 
fault.  But  all  that  is  by  the  way. 

We  took  from  on  board  the  Indian  cargo  boat  the 
entire  provision  of  rice  for  six  hundred  men,  as  well 

53 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

as  the  officers'  provision  of  whiskey.  The  officers  had 
with  them  cases  of  port  wine  and  divers  alcohols.  It 
was  lucky  for  them,  for  you  know  except  for  the  old 
marc  and  rum,  in  small  quantities,  Fourgues  does  n't 
like  to  have  us  drink.  They  had  to  have  the  fafa  to 
make  their  cocktails  and  serve  them  specially  during 
the  entire  voyage. 

The  night  we  stayed  in  Port  Said,  Fourgues  and  I 
went  to  buy  certain  eatables,  preserves,  jams,  etc., 
with  which  to  feed  all  those  officers.  The  things  were 
not  easy  to  find,  and  whew  —  the  prices!  What  en- 
raged Fourgues  the  most  was  that  we  had  to  pay  for 
everything  in  gold,  but  no  one  ever  gave  us  anything 
but  silver.  As  the  same  thing  had  happened  in 
Alexandria,  at  Cairo,  and  everywhere  we  have  been 
since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  he  claims  that  it  is 
another  stroke  of  the  Boches. 

"You  see,  my  boy,  we  pay  in  gold,  but  we  have  no 
way  of  getting  any  ourselves.  Don't  worry!  It  is  n't 
lost  for  everybody!  They  have  their  agents  all 
around!  Our  good  money  goes  by  way  of  Greece  or 
Italy  and  with  it  they  pay  the  neutrals  for  their 
victuals!" 

Fourgues  added  some  other  things,  but  it  is  better 
not  to  tell  you  because  you  will  imagine  that  I  am 
growing  too  cranky  and  you  know  that  I  don't  like 
cranks.  The  Pamir  went  to  Marseilles  first.  We  had 
fairly  good  weather,  but  as  we  were  so  light,  we 
rolled  and  pitched  a  little,  not  much,  —  just  like  a 
comfortable  father  of  a  family,  —  but  it  was  enough 

54 


HINDU  MUSIC 

to  lay  five  hundred  out  of  the  six  hundred  Hindus 
on  their  backs.  Almost  all  the  rice  is  left,  for  they 
could  n't  eat  a  thing.  It  was  better  thus,  for  I  don't 
know  what  our  cook  would  have  done  with  six  hun- 
dred of  them  to  feed.  He  had  no  time  to  waste  as  it 
was,  though  it  is  easy  to  take  care  of  Hindus  —  all 
you  need  is  some  rice  and  water.  About  ten  of  them 
had  brought  flutes  or  drums,  and  they  did  not  once 
stop  playing  from  Port  Said  to  Havre.  They  played 
in  relays,  two  at  a  time,  installing  themselves  just  at 
the  foot  of  the  bridge  so  that  those  in  the  hold  who 
were  seasick  could  hear,  and  all  the  time,  night  and 
day,  they  beat  the  drum  and  played  the  flute.  You 
have  no  idea  what  that  Oriental  music  can  be.  At 
first  it  seemed  as  though  they  played  the  same  notes 
all  the  time  and  then  —  not  at  all!  It  comes  and  goes 
like  a  thought!  When  I  had  the  watch  at  night  some- 
times I  longed  to  sleep,  listening  to  them,  and  then 
sometimes  I  wanted  to  cry.  There  were  times  when 
I  wanted  to  tell  them  to  be  still  because  it  was  too 
stupid  to  feel  your  heart  swell  so.  And  then  it  would 
seem  as  though  I  must  have  it  and  I  listened  after 
all.  I  tell  you  my  foolishness,  poor  old  fellow. 

At  Marseilles  we  simply  went  in  and  out  again. 
An  officer  of  the  English  Mission  came  to  tell  us  to 
go  to  Havre  with  our  Hindus,  but  the  superior  offi- 
cers, who  had  had  enough  of  it  in  the  bureau-drawers 
of  Muriac  and  Blangy  and  who  had  finished  their 
port  and  their  whiskey  the  day  before,  asked  to  leave 
at  once.  As  they  were  lords,  or  at  least  something 

55 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

'way-up,  they  could  go  without  waiting  and  the 
"subs"  took  their  places. 

The  Pamir  went  all  around  Spain  and  the  Atlantic 
coast  with  the  six  hundred  Hindus,  who  were  dread- 
fully sick  and  arrived  at  Havre  like  rags.  Fourgues 
said  that  it  was  just  a  little  barbarous,  the  more  so 
as  nothing  is  really  saved  by  the  trip,  for  it  will  take 
a  month  at  least  before  all  those  unbleached  boys 
will  be  able  to  go  to  the  front. 

They  were  exhausted.  Some  of  them  almost  died, 
they  were  spitting  blood.  And  as  they  were  cold, 
bronchitis  and  inflammation  of  the  lungs  had  set  in. 
The  only  physician  they  had  was  Fourgues,  which 
means  none  at  all.  As  a  remedy  he  gave  them  rum 
in  hot  water,  for  our  medicine  chest  had  soon  been 
emptied.  Three  of  them  died,  which  is  not  many, 
say  the  officers. 

We  threw  them  overboard  into  the  Atlantic  with 
a  sack  of  coal  at  their  feet  to  make  them  sink.  That 
hurt  us  French.  But  the  others  —  oh,  la  la!  It's 
plain  to  be  seen  that  in  India  human  life  doesn't 
count  for  much. 

We  were  all  glad  to  leave  them  at  Havre.  I  wonder 
what  they  can  do  at  the  front.  If  it  came  to  being 
killed,  I  don't  believe  they  would  hesitate,  and  when 
you  have  seen  them  shivering  and  crowding  together 
under  the  melting  snow  of  late  February,  it  seems 
probable  that  they  would  die  like  flies  in  the  trenches. 
And  we  were  a  little  afraid  they  might  leave  some 
cholera  in  the  Pamir,  which  Fourgues  didn't  like 

56 


COAL  FOR  THE  ENGLISH  GRAND  FLEET 

very  well,  having  seen  a  real  epidemic  in  China.  So 
he  was  glad  when  they  sent  us  to  Sunderland  for  coal, 
because  he  pretends  that  coal,  although  dirty,  is  the 
best  antiseptic  known  for  most  diseases. 

At  Sunderland  we  loaded  a  good  three  thousand 
tons  in  a  short  time.  What  is  it  going  to  cost  France, 
all  these  thousands  of  tons  of  coal  which  must  be 
bought  abroad?  It  won't  be  a  small  price!  I  know 
that  the  Boches  have  swept  away  our  northern  mines, 
but  there  are  other  mines  in  France.  Evidently  they 
are  not  sufficient ;  but  if  we  exploited  them  and  econo- 
mized a  fourth  of  our  purchases,  at  least  that  much 
would  not  be  going  out  and  our  exchange  would  not 
rise  as  it  is  doing.  It  is  vexatious  for  a  country  as  rich 
as  ours  to  spend  all  that  good  French  money  and  to 
see  how  they  give  you  the  change  with  five  or  ten  per 
cent  discount.  It  will  be  nice  if  that  goes  on  1 1  asked 
Fourgues  why  the  coal  was  left  in  the  earth  when  it 
would  be  so  much  better  in  the  hold  or  the  fireplace. 
He  replied  that  this  was  because  of  a  law  of  pub- 
lic welfare  under  the  Revolution,  made  to  prohibit 
illicit  gain,  and  that  the  same  law  of  public  welfare 
did  not  permit  us  even  now  to  take  our  underground 

riches.    "It's  just  as  it  was  at  H ,"  he  added; 

"the  substratum  belongs  to  the  Revolution!  It 
would  seem  that  it's  better  to  be  ruined  than  to 
touch  it!" 

But  the  coal  we  got  at  Sunderland  was  not  for  the 
French  after  all,  for  they  sent  us  to  the  English 
grand  fleet.    The  youms  were  getting  expeditions 

51 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

ready  for  Africa,  Mesopotamia,  and  the  Dardanelles; 
they  had  no  boats  free,  and  as  Jellicoe's  fleet  was 
crying  for  coal,  we  were  sent  in  a  hurry.  I  don't  tell 
you  where  the  Pamir  went  to  find  the  grand  fleet 
because  an  arch-edict  forbids.  Even  the  English 
journals  have  n't  the  right  to  mention  it,  and,  any- 
way, you  may  be  sure  my  letter  would  be  censored. 
They  don't  want  the  Germans  to  know  where  the 
English  ships  are. 

The  Pamir  made  the  trip  up  there  from  Sunderland 
twice,  and,  I  can  tell  you,  there  are  a  lot  of  them  — 
battleships  and  cruisers  and  all  the  rest!  What  are 
all  I  saw  at  Fano  beside  this?  Nothing,  my  poor 
friend!  If  the  youms  have  n't  yet  let  loose  for  war  on 
land,  I  beg  you  to  believe  that  they  have  a  few  ships, 
and  beauties! 

Only,  they  don't  tire  them.  The  squadrons  rest 
quietly  at  anchor  and  from  time  to  time  they  go  out 
and  look  for  the  Boches,  or  if  the  Boches  come  out, 
they  pounce  on  them.  In  this  way  the  engines  and 
personnel  are  not  in  rags  like  the  French  fleet.  And 
what  did  the  English  officers  do  —  being  awfully 
bored,  by  the  way  —  but  invite  Fourgues  and  me 
over  during  the  coaling  and  question  us  because  we 
had  been  at  the  other  end  of  the  war!  Honestly,  they 
thought  we  were  kidding  them  when  we  told  them 
that  the  whole  lot  of  you,  but  especially  the  cruisers 
and  destroyers,  were  kept  dashing  up  and  down  at 
sea  with  your  tails  curled  up,  for  forty  and  fifty  days 
at  a  time,  trying  to  stop  up  the  Adriatic.  They  asked 

58 


THE  ENGLISH  NAVAL  OFFICERS 

us  if  it  was  also  the  custom  in  the  French  army,  when 
a  regiment  was  not  fighting,  to  have  it  march  back 
and  forth  behind  the  lines  for  five  and  six  weeks  at  a 
time  —  and  then  a  lot  of  other  questions  by  which  we 
could  see  that  they  did  n't  understand  it  at  all. 

That's  not  to  say  that  the  grand  fleet  does  nothing. 
The  cruisers  and  destroyers  guard  the  coast  of  Eng- 
land and  patrol  as  far  as  Norway.  The  Government 
takes  pity  on  them,  too,  for  the  storms  they  have  to 
face  and  the  state  in  which  they  return,  and  dame  ! 
they  are  given  a  rest  —  sent  to  port  with  leave  for 
everybody!  And  you  know  it's  very  different,  drudg- 
ing near  your  native  land,  feeling  that  you  are  pro- 
tected and  that  when  duty  is  over,  you  may  go  and 
pass  a  day  or  two  with  your  family. 

They  are  all  jolly,  except  that  they  are  annoyed 
at  not  having  been  able  to  have  a  big  set-to  with  the 
Germans.  Apart  from  that,  they  feel  that  the  Eng- 
lish fleet  has  done  its  duty,  and  they  cannot  under- 
stand why  you  are  kept  on  the  go  as  we  described  to 
them.  This  is  not  to  run  you  down,  old  man,  now 
that  you  are  in  the  navy  and,  as  Fourgues  says, 
infected  with  its  spirit,  but  the  English  sailors  are 
rather  fresher  than  yours.  And  you  should  see  the 
difference  in  age!  When  you  go  with  your  coal  from 
one  English  ship  to  another  and  chat  with  this  one 
and  that,  you  think  you  are  talking  with  one  of  the 
fellows  when  it  may  be  an  admiral!  On  the  French 
cruisers  the  commander  always  has  white  hair  and 
a  white  beard;  it  tires  him  to  climb  a  ladder,  and  he 

59 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

is  afraid  of  saying  too  much.  Fourgues  claims  that 
the  big  chiefs  are  even  worse,  but  I  have  never  seen 
them.  At  any  rate,  for  the  destroyers  here  they  give 
them  quite  young  men,  from  twenty-five  to  thirty 
years  old,  while  down  there  all  I  saw  were  well  over 
forty  with  pepper-and-salt  hair.  It's  like  that  from 
the  top  down,  ten  or  fifteen  years'  difference.  The 
enthusiasm  is  in  proportion.  I  don't  know  how  I 
shall  be  at  forty,  but  certainly  with  rheumatism  and 
a  nice  touch  of  liver  complaint  I  should  find  it  pretty 
tough  to  be  set  on  a  destroyer  where  one  is  drenched 
from  the  first  of  January  until  the  thirty-first  of 
December,  and  to  command  no  more  than  sixty  men. 
Whereas,  if  I  could  have  that  now,  just  see  if  I 
would  n't  be  pleased  and  laugh  at  being  wet  to  the 
bones,  because  I  should  know  that  when  I  got  to  be 
forty  or  fifty,  if  I  had  served  well,  I  should  command 
a  squadron  with  thousands  of  men  and  a  lot  of  ships! 
...  Maybe  I'm  wrong  and  the  English  too,  but  I 
wish  you  would  explain  to  me  why  it  is  n't  the  same 
with  us  as  with  them. 

I  told  you  that  the  Pamir  made  two  voyages  be- 
tween Sunderland  and  the  grand  fleet.  On  the  second 
they  sent  us  away  off  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  up 
north  in  the  midst  of  the  islands  where  there  was 
dirty  weather,  and  where  the  Pamir  coaled  the  flotil- 
las of  destroyers  and  scouts.  These  are  on  the  go  all 
the  time  —  with  leave  in  England,  you  may  be  sure 
—  near  German  waters,  and  they  say  that  the  Boches 
will  never  come  out  for  a  real  big  battle,  but  that  it 

60 


A  LOOSE  BLOCKADE 

is  n't  worth  while  trying  to  get  them  out  of  their  holes 
because  their  coast  waters  are  full  of  mines  and  sub- 
marines and  the  game  would  n't  be  worth  the  candle. 
The  English  would  be  blown  up  before  getting  any- 
where near.  Although  this  is  not  what  the  English 
and  French  papers  say,  I  think  we  can  believe  those 
who  have  been  there.  "If  there  is  a  serious  battle," 
they  say,  "it  will  be  a  big  surprise;  but  that's  not  to 
say  that  we  don't  want  one."  The  Boches,  it  seems, 
are  informed  from  England  itself,  where  a  lot  of  their 
countrymen  are  at  large,  and  as  soon  as  an  English 
ship  puts  to  sea,  Berlin  is  warned.  Whereas  when  the 
Germans  come  to  bombard  the  English  coasts,  no 
one  knows  about  it  until  the  shells  begin  to  fall. 

They  also  say  that  the  Allies  are  a  little  too  good 
about  respecting  neutral  territorial  waters  and  that 
the  Germans  don't  hesitate  to  borrow  Danish  or 
Dutch  waters  for  a  run  from  Kiel  over  to  Ostend  or 
Bruges.  This  reminds  me  of  what  I  saw  off  the  coast 
of  Italy  the  first  time  we  coaled  the  French  fleet. 
While  our  cruisers  and  destroyers  were  stopping 
ships  at  sea,  the  Pamir  ran  across  lots  of  boats 
close  to  the  Italian  coast,  going  up  to  Trieste  or  in 
that  direction,  and  they  were  well  loaded,  believe 
me. 

If  that's  the  way  we  are  blockading  the  Boches, 
they  won't  need  to  cry  "Kameradl"  very  soon!  I 
wish  you  would  tell  me  how  many  cargoes  of  con- 
traband the  navy  has  seized.  I  ask  you  a  lot  of 
questions,  but  that's  because  you  wrote  in  your  last 

61 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

letter  that  it  interested  you,  too,  to  know  what  goes 
on  outside  of  your  Auvergne. 

As  you  added  that  my  mind  was  improving  with 
the  war,  I  also  address  myself  to  my  sometime  en- 
sign, if  you  please,  in  order  to  form  my  little  judg- 
ment! You  know  I  tell  you  everything  that  comes 
into  my  head,  just  as  I  used  to  do  when  you  said 
that  I  talked  like  a  coach.  Anyway,  it's  something 
if  I  taught  you  to  listen!  Good  Lord,  how  stupid  I 
must  have  been,  only  two  years  ago!  Fourgues,  too, 
claims  that  I  improve. 

Just  the  same  the  old  rascal  played  me  a  dirty 
trick.  When  we  got  back  to  Newcastle  he  nailed  me 
to  the  ship  and  ran  up  to  London  for  a  change  of  air. 
I  must  tell  you  that  on  returning  from  Scotland  we 
had  one  of  those  little  spring  hurricanes  which  put 
two  boilers  out  of  business  and  loosened  the  muffs  of 
our  broken  shaft,  which  we  have  trundled  about  ever 
since  August.  Then,  as  the  Pamir  has  n't  been  unhar- 
nessed since  Alexandria,  Fourgues  said  he  would  n't 
go  another  step  till  they  put  the  ship  in  the  dock, 
examined  her  hull,  retubed  the  boilers,  and  changed 
the  shaft.  The  youms  wanted  to  send  him  up  there 
again  with  three  thousand  tons  of  coal  for  the  fleet, 
but  Fourgues  answered  that  an  old  fox  like  him 
knew  when  a  boat  was  done  for,  and  that  he  did  n't 
intend  that  the  Pamir  should  be  put  entirely  out  of 
business  like  an  idiot,  when  he  was  the  one  to  catch 
it  and  not  the  rest  of  them. 

In  order  to  have  it  his  own  way  in  peace,  he  took 
62 


CAPTAIN  FOURGUES  GOES  TO  LONDON 

the  train  that  very  evening.    While  he  was  packing 
his  valise  he  called  me  into  his  cabin:  — 

"Look,  my  boy,  here  is  a  paper.  I  leave  you  as 
commander  of  the  Pamir  and  the  whole  outfit.  Have 
her  put  into  the  dock  and  repaired.  I  shall  see  if  you 
can  manage.  They  made  me  do  the  same  thing  once 
in  Melbourne  on  my  boat  when  I  knew  less  than  you. 
When  the  hull  is  repainted,  the  boilers  retubed,  and 
the  shaft  replaced,  telegraph  me  at  the  Charing  Cross 
Hotel,  London.  I  give  you  ten  days.  Put  it  through ! " 

"But,  captain,  to  whom  shall  I  address  myself?" 

"You  are  the  commander  and  you  have  a  tongue. 
As  for  me,  I'm  going  up  to  London  to  raise  hell  in 
order  to  get  the  wireless,  and  if  the  owner  won't  put 
it  in,  I  '11  go  to  Paris.  But  I  don't  want  to  hear  a  word 
from  the  Pamir  until  you  wire  me  *  Cleared!'  Do 
you  understand  ?  " 

"Certainly,  captain,  but — " 

"Tara-tutu!  Here  are  the  keys,  the  papers,  the 
checks,  and  everything.  If  you  are  cleared  in  ten 
days  I  shall  arrange  to  have  you  made  a  captain  for 
a  long  voyage,  because  then  they  can  give  you  a  bark 
all  to  yourself.  So  long,  my  boy,  barca!" 

He  shook  hands  and  was  gone.  So  for  four  days, 
old  man,  I  have  been  doing  things.  It  is  just  as 
though  you  had  been  put  in  command  of  the  Au- 
vergne  and  being  the  master  is  very  different  from 
receiving  orders.  There  are  a  lot  of  snags  and  you 
have  to  take  the  initiative  instead  of  merely  listening 
and  executing.  Before,  I  used  to  think  that  Fourgues 

63 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

had  rather  a  heavy  hand,  but  now  I  think  that  to 
make  things  go  you  have  to  have  an  eye  on  every- 
thing and  not  spare  your  men.  Most  of  the  time  I 
am  in  overalls  rummaging  around  the  boilers  and  in 
the  tunnel  of  the  screw.  Things  are  coming  on.  The 
Pamir  has  been  scraped  and  will  get  her  second  coat 
of  paint  to-day.  One  boiler  and  half  of  another  have 
been  retubed.  Fourgues  calculated  the  business  very 
well.  It  can  be  done  in  ten  days  by  not  losing  an 
hour.  We  are  hard  at  it.  The  crew  is  all  right.  You 
know  what  it  is  to  get  a  boat  into  your  blood;  and 
then,  when  you  see  that  you  are  of  some  use,  —  ah, 
old  pal,  if  we  are  cleared  in  ten  days,  the  king  won't 
be  my  cousin! 

Malta,  June  17,  igi5 

My  dear  Friend,  — 

I  believe  the  Pamir  is  engaged  for  good  this 
time  in  the  Oriental  affair.  We  have  been  here  for  a 
month  and  a  half  and  it  does  n't  look  as  though  it 
were  going  to  be  over  right  away.  I  ask  nothing  bet- 
ter, because  at  present  this  is  the  only  place  where 
interesting  things  are  happening.  Fourgues  is  also 
pleased.  We  get  about,  we  transport  stuff.  We  are 
not  the  important  ones,  but  at  any  rate  the  merchant 
marine  is  doing  all  it  can  and  the  old  Pamir  wastes 
no  time. 

She  runs  all  by  herself  now,  since  the  shaft  and 
tubes  were  changed  —  which  is  to  say  that  she  is  en- 
tirely refitted.   At  Newcastle  I  did  n't  clear  in  ten 

64 


NO  WIRELESS  FOR  THE  PAMIR 

days  after  all,  but  in  eleven.  But  as  we  were  well  ad- 
vanced the  tenth  day,  I  wired  Fourgues  "Cleared!" 
and  then  shook  in  my  shoes  for  fear  he  would  get 
there  before  it  was  all  done.  I  made  them  work  night 
and  day  the  last  twenty-four  hours,  but  the  crew 
never  flinched.  In  short,  when  Fourgues  arrived  they 
were  letting  the  water  into  the  dock  and  an  hour 
afterwards  the  Pamir  was  alongside  the  wharf.  He 
saw  very  well  that  I  had  n't  quite  put  it  through,  but 
said  never  a  word,  for  his  little  trip  had  put  him  in  a 
good  humor. 

"Very  good,  my  boy.  I  will  send  a  report  to  the 
owner  and  say  that  he  can  give  you  a  boat  when  one 
is  free"  —  which  won't  be  in  a  hurry,  you  may  be 
sure. 

This  rather  went  to  my  head,  though.  Just  think 
if  I  would  n't  like  to  command  a  tub  during  the  war  I 
Then  Fourgues  explained.  He  had  had  time  to  go  to 
Paris  and  had  brought  back  a  lot  of  information.  It 
seems  that  in  France  all  construction  is  suspended 
because  the  war  will  be  over  before  the  end  of  the 
year  and  we  should  think  of  nothing  but  war-work 
and  munitions.  As  all  the  merchant  ships  are  being 
used  at  the  present  moment,  I  shan't  soon  get  a  com- 
mand. Fourgues  also  saw  the  owner  and  had  rather 
a  hot  encounter  because  he  would  not  pay  for  the 
wireless,  saying  that  the  Pamir  had  got  along  like 
this  for  nearly  ten  months  and  that  it  was  not  worth 
while  undertaking  the  expense,  for  whereas  wireless 
was  good  for  the  illustrated  papers  that  tell  grand 

65 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

stories  about  it,  at  bottom  it  wasn't  much  use. 
There  was  nothing  to  be  done  with  the  owner,  so 
Fourgues  went  to  the  Navy  Department  where  they 
said  much  the  same  thing.  It  seems  that  we  are  quite 
safe  on  the  sea,  that  we  are  in  control,  that  the  Ger- 
man submarines  are  a  bluff,  and  that,  anyway,  the 
Germans  have  n't  any.  Fourgues  is  not  of  this  opin- 
ion, not  exactly.  He  says  that  the  Germans  are  n't 
so  stupid  as  to  leave  us  in  peace  on  the  sea  and  that 
they  are  preparing  another  stroke  equal  to  the  last. 
But  all  the  official  gentlemen  would  n't  hear  of  this, 
so  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  —  the  Pamir  went 
out  as  before.  The  owner  did  n't  have  to  add  a  thing, 
not  even  a  cask  on  the  masthead  for  a  lookout.  But 
Fourgues  had  one  installed  under  the  pretext  that 
fifty  francs  more  or  less  would  ruin  neither  the  owner 
nor  the  stockholders.  They  don't  lose  time,  those 
gentlemen !  The  Pamir,  which  is  nearly  twenty  years 
old,  has  paid  almost  a  thousand  francs  a  day  in 
rent,  without  counting  the  coal,  damages,  insurance, 
freight,  and  everything.  The  stockholders  have  only 
to  open  their  pockets  —  it  tumbles  in!  At  that  rate, 
in  a  year  they  will  have  enough  to  pay  for  two  or 
three  other  Pamirs,  but  not  enough,  of  course,  for 
them  to  spare  a  few  thousand  francs  for  the  wireless! 
But  I'm  forgetting  another  story.  You  will  re- 
member that  we  struck  the  cruiser  Lamartine  on  the 
occasion  of  our  first  coaling  at  sea  and  that  we 
smashed  her  bows  and  one  of  our  lifeboats.  It  was  n't 
Fourgues'  fault,  you  remember,  and  he  said  that  it 

66 


LOADING  GUNS  AND  SHELLS  AT  NEWCASTLE 

must  all  be  repaired  at  Newcastle.  But  the  owner  re- 
fused outright  to  pay  anything,  saying  that  that  sort 
of  damages  were  not  included  in  the  agreement.  The 
navy  also  refused,  under  the  pretext  that  it  is  not 
responsible  henceforth  for  a  ship  on  which  the  cap- 
tain is  not  in  the  Government  service.  They  de- 
manded a  report  from  Fourgues  and  will  also  ask  the 
Lamartine  for  one.  All  that  will  make  a  lot  of  papers 
and  complications  without  end.  Just  the  same,  we 
sail  with  two  new  lifeboats,  for  which  Fourgues  pre- 
ferred to  pay  out  of  his  own  pocket  rather  than  do 
without. 

At  Newcastle  the  Pamir  took  on  field-guns  for  the 
English  expeditionary  force  in  the  Dardanelles  and 
shells  for  the  big  guns  of  their  battleships.  They  are 
of  a  different  calibre.  We  put  the  guns  in  the  forward 
hold  and  the  shells  aft.  As  we  had  a  good  deal  of  room 
left  aft,  because  the  twelve-inch  shells,  though  heavy, 
take  little  space,  they  told  us  to  go  by  way  of  Gibral- 
tar to  fetch  the  supplies  and  baggage  of  a  company  of 
soldiers  bound  for  Gallipoli  who  were  to  leave  at  the 
same  time  as  we,  but  on  another  boat.  All  this  was  a 
little  complicated,  but  we  have  seen  plenty  of  com- 
plications since  the  war  began.  Moreover,  the  Eng- 
lish are  n't  fussy.  The  officers  in  charge  of  the  load- 
ing come  around  for  five  minutes  every  day,  take  a 
look  and  go  away. 

This  is  the  first  time  that  the  Pamir  has  carried 
shells,  —  real  ones,  charged  with  cordite,  —  and  you 
can  imagine  how  afraid  we  were  that  one  of  them 

67 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

would  fall  into  the  bottom  of  the  hold  and  blow 
everything  up!  Fourgues  seized  the  opportunity  to 
have  all  the  cables  of  the  winches  and  the  iron-work 
of  the  derricks  changed,  saying  that  they  were  a  little 
old  and  that  he  could  not  guarantee  their  solidity. 
The  English  made  no  bother  at  all  about  it,  but 
handed  us  over  a  fine  cable,  brand-new,  of  excellent 
steel.  We  even  had  two  or  three  hundred  yards  left! 
And  I  tell  you,  the  Pamir  sailed  completely  done 
over! 

It  took  ten  days  to  get  to  Gibraltar,  which  is 
rather  long,  but  as  we  ran  into  a  lot  of  fog,  with  that 
kind  of  a  cargo  Fourgues  was  not  anxious  to  get  into 
a  collision  so  he  diminished  speed.  Think  of  it!  We 
had  the  munitions  of  two  big  English  battleships, 
and  if  the  Pamir  went  down,  they  would  have  had 
to  wait  at  least  two  months  before  they  could  send 
the  Turks  a  single  shell!  Fourgues  knows  how  to 
navigate.  When  we  have  a  cargo  it's  all  the  same 
to  him  whether  he  kicks  up  a  lot  of  spray  or  whether 
he  crawls,  but  either  way  he  makes  continual  rounds 
in  the  holds  to  see  if  the  stowage  is  solid  and  that  no 
cases  of  cartridges  are  broken  or  shells  lying  around 
loose. 

The  English  stowed  it  all  very  well,  however,  with 
good  oak  and  new  pine.  There  was  no  danger  of  it 
shifting.  The  Pamir  is  rich!  We  shall  have  all  that 
timber,  and  Fourgues  hopes  they  will  give  him  more 
munitions  to  transport,  now  that  he  is  arranged  for 
it,  because  that  seems  more  like  real  war-work. 

68 


GIBRALTAR  AND  MUDROS 

At  Gibraltar  the  company  of  soldiers  for  which  the 
Pamir  was  to  carry  supplies  waited  for  us  until  eve- 
ning. But  as  we  were  held  back  by  the  fog  and  as  the 
company  was  wanted  in  the  Orient  in  a  hurry,  they 
went,  piling  their  stuff  on  the  deck  of  their  boat.  But 
the  English  did  n't  wish  to  waste  the  hundred  tons 
we  had  at  their  disposal,  so  they  dumped  in  a  great 
lot  of  preserves  and  jam  and  chocolate  which  was 
waiting  on  the  dock.  They  feed  the  English  soldiers 
well,  and  the  war  must  be  costing  England  a  pretty 
penny.  We  bought  tobacco  at  Gibraltar  and  cards 
and  Spanish  wine.  The  latter  is  cheap  and  of  a  good 
quality.  But  the  place  is  very  monotonous  and  tire- 
some. It  may  be  because  of  the  war.  There 's  noth- 
ing nice  there  except  the  landscape  with  the  rocks. 
Otherwise  all  you  can  say  of  it  is  that  it's  a  colony  I 

The  Pamir  went  direct  to  Mudros,  where  they  told 
us  to  report  and  receive  orders  as  to  destination.  In 
the  Mediterranean  the  weather  was  not  so  very  bad, 
but  all  the  same,  Fourgues  is  right  —  one  never 
knows  what's  going  to  happen  in  the  way  of  weather; 
the  wind  changes  without  one's  knowing  why  and  the 
sea  rises  in  an  hour.  The  Pamir  tossed  a  good  deal, 
all  the  more  as  Fourgues  would  n't  go  fast  because 
of  the  explosives  in  the  hold.  But  it  was  n't  worth 
the  trouble  carrying  those  shells,  because  when  we 
reached  Mudros  they  told  us  that  of  the  two  ships 
which  were  to  take  them,  one  had  been  sunk  by  a 
submarine  the  week  before  at  the  Dardanelles,  and 
the  other,  not  being  able  to  get  through,  had  returned 

69 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

to  Malta  to  be  repaired.  Was  n't  it  stupid  to  have 
known  nothing  at  all  about  it  because  of  not  having 
any  wireless!  We  looked  as  though  we  had  tumbled 

down  from  the  moon  with  our  shells  for  the and 

the ,  and  everybody  was  laughing  at  us. 

If  we  had  been  informed,  Fourgues  would  have 
put  in  at  Malta  to  learn  what  to  do  with  the  ammu- 
nition, as  it  was  of  a  special  kind  and  could  n't  be 
used  by  the  other  English  ships  that  were  there. 
Well,  so  we  kept  the  ammunition  and  left  the  jam 
and  preserves!  There  was  no  difficulty  about  them 
—  everybody  wanted  them;  they  were  unloaded  in  a 
flash.  As  for  the  field-guns,  no  one  was  willing  to  take 
them  off  because  it  seems  that  they  belonged  at  the 
front  and  the  bill  of  lading  was  not  sufficiently  clear. 
We  lost  two  days  waiting  for  orders  from  Egypt, 
from  English  headquarters.  Finally  they  told  us  to 
go  to  Alexandria  where  the  guns  would  be  assigned 
to  a  brigade  that  was  forming.  During  this  time  the 
troops  at  Gallipoli  were  crying  with  all  their  might 
and  main  for  guns  and  we  had  only  to  carry  them 
over  —  we  were  so  very  near!  But  our  order  was  im- 
perative and  we  went  to  Alexandria.  When  we  got 
there  they  said  that  the  English  brigade  had  already 
started  and  that  we  must  catch  up  with  it  immedi- 
ately at  Gallipoli,  without  which  it  would  have  am- 
munition and  no  guns.  We  set  out  again  at  once  and 
arrived  on  that  part  of  the  coast  where  the  troops 
they  call  the  Anzacs  are  stationed.  They  unloaded 
the  guns  as  they  could.  Since  its  arrival  the  brigade 

70 


THE  DARDANELLES  CAMPAIGN 

has  been  bombarded  a  good  deal  without  being  able 
to  respond,  having  no  artillery,  and  they  got  after 
us  a  little  about  it,  but  we  couldn't  help  it.  We 
stayed  there  five  days,  as  the  lighters  were  few  and 
the  coast  pretty  difficult.  The  Turks  fired  some  big 
shells  at  the  Pamir  —  they  fell  all  around  but  never 
touched  her.  Fourgues  was  as  happy  as  a  god.  He 
stood,  leaning  against  the  rail  with  his  field-glass, 
watching  the  shots:  — 

"  Tiens,  my  boy,  that  one's  too  short!  That's  too 
long!  They'll  never  get  the  old  Pamir!" 

At  one  side  there  was  the  steamer  Terre-de-Feu, 
which  was  carrying  fodder  and  near  which  we  stayed 
for  two  days.  Old  man  Plantat,  a  friend  of  Fourgues, 
commands  her  and  came  on  board  the  Pamir  for  a 
meal.  Plantat  has  been  up  and  down  the  /Ege&n 
Sea  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  Dardanelles 
campaign  and  he  gave  us  a  lot  of  tips.  I  believe  you 
know  him;  he  said  he  remembered  you.  He  is  just 
the  same  devil-may-care  sort  as  ever.  He  said  that 
the  whole  business  in  the  Orient  is  a  failure,  and  that 
we  shall  never  get  to  Constantinople  because  we 
did  n't  do  what  we  should  have  done  at  the  very  be- 
ginning, and  now  it's  too  late;  the  Turks  won't  let 
themselves  be  taken  unawares  and  are  sending  out 
mines  and  submarines  all  the  time. 

He  also  said  that  at  the  beginning,  when  the  Bou- 
vet  and  other  boats  were  lost,  there  was  nothing  to 
do  but  push  right  on  without  looking  back  and  that 
Constantinople  would  have  been  reduced  by  our 

71 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

guns,  except  for  a  lot  of  diplomatic  delays  before- 
hand and  a  lot  of  indecision  at  the  time;  but  that 
now  there  is  no  use  exciting  ourselves  about  it  any 
more.  We  shall  only  lose  men  and  ships  and  money 
and  be  obliged  to  give  up  in  the  end  without  having 
done  anything. 

I  repeat  this  as  Plantat  said  it.  But  I  omit  his 
arguments,  which  you  must  understand  better  than 
I,  on  the  Auvergne,  where  you  get  all  the  wireless 
news.  This  is  the  first  time  that  Fourgues  and  I  have 
heard  anything  serious  about  Oriental  matters,  for 
we  have  only  the  papers  and  the  statements  of  offi- 
cial persons  who  say  that  Constantinople  will  be 
taken  to-morrow.  Ever  since  I  began  the  maritime 
history  you  sent  me,  I  have  been  saying  to  my- 
self, as  I  read  the  accounts  of  the  admirals  and  am- 
bassadors of  the  old  time,  "What  a  lot  of  bluffer  si" 
But  I  forget  that  no  one  perceives  this  until  one  or 
two  hundred  years  afterwards  on  going  through  the 
archives,  and  that  at  the  time  they  seemed  quite 
wonderful.  Now,  as  I  ponder  and  listen  to  men  like 
Fourgues  and  Plantat,  who  are  not  easily  fooled,  I 
see  clearly  that  in  this  war  it  is  the  same  old  cere- 
mony. The  more  newspapers  there  are,  the  less  one 
knows  of  the  truth.  Of  course,  it's  not  the  Pamir 
that  will  win  the  war,  but  I'll  be  hanged  if  we  ever 
know  why  or  for  what  reason  they  send  us  here, 
there,  and  then  away  again! 

When  we  are  in  one  place,  the  authorities  say  that 
evidently  things  are  a  little  mixed  up  around  there, 

73 


CARRYING  WOUNDED  AND  SICK  TO  MALTA 

but  that  it's  all  going  to  straighten  out  soon,  and 
that,  anyway,  everything  is  going  well  everywhere 
else.  We  are  reassured.  And  then  the  Pamir  ar- 
rives somewhere  else  —  and  she  gets  about  a  good 
deal,  as  you  can  testify  —  and  we  hear  the  same 
anthem.  What  does  it  mean?  They  are  a  lot  of  liars 
and  the  poilus  and  the  sailors  are  the  ones  who 
suffer! 

And  who  can  think  that  everything  is  going  for 
the  best  in  the  face  of  a  job  like  ours  after  Gallipoli  ? 
I  wrote  you  on  another  page  of  how  that  brigade 
without  guns  was  bombarded  for  two  days.  The 
coast  is  as  hard  as  marble,  the  Turkish  guns  are  on 
the  heights,  and  there  is  no  way  of  sheltering  your- 
self from  them.  When  they  had  corrected  their 
range  and  things  began  to  fall  too  close,  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  move  away  if  you  could,  for  those 
mortars  can't  be  stopped  with  your  hand.  So  there 
were  not  a  few  wounded,  without  counting  those  who 
had  caught  the  fever  or  colic  during  the  forty-eight 
hours  and  were  half  dead.  And  not  a  hospital-ship 
in  the  road! 

As  the  Pamir  was  starting  for  Malta  to  carry  those 
shells  to  the  battleship  that  was  being  repaired  there, 
they  sent  a  hundred  broken  arms  and  legs  and  as 
many  sick  along  with  us.  Fortunately,  we  had  the 
planks  left  from  the  Morocco  Boches  and  from  the 
stowage  of  the  field-artillery.  We  were  able  to  manu- 
facture a  series  of  frames  on  the  deck  and  in  the  for- 
ward hold.  It  was  splendid  the  way  the  crew  worked. 

73 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Engine-room  men,  stokers,  deckhands —  every- 
body—  nailed,  screwed,  and  hammered  for  four 
days.  You  could  do  anything  with  boys  like  that! 
Fourgues  could  grumble  and  say  it  was  not  going 
fast  enough,  but  all  the  same  there  were  tears  in  his 
eyes,  especially  when,  one  bed  being  hardly  finished, 
a  poor  devil  with  the  face  of  a  dying  man  came  along 
and  was  hastily  shoved  into  it,  who  smiled  as  soon 
as  he  was  quiet.  Sometimes  three  or  four  would  come 
at  once,  and  we  put  them  where  we  could  while  we 
nailed  the  final  boards  of  their  beds.  The  hammer- 
strokes  hurt  their  heads,  but  they  waited  smiling. 

Finally  the  Pamir  set  out,  with  her  explosives  in 
the  aft  hold  and  her  sick  in  the  forward  hold  and 
everywhere  else.  They  were  able  to  give  us  a  young 
doctor  and  two  nurses.  I  don't  know  why  the  three 
are  n't  dead  of  fatigue,  with  their  two  hundred  sick 
and  wounded.  For  medicines  and  antiseptics  we 
had  a  single  chest  which  was  emptied  before  Mata- 
pan.  The  fever  patients  and  those  who  had  colic 
began  to  improve,  and  as  it  was  necessary  to  set 
them  on  their  feet  again,  the  crew  of  the  Pamir 
asked  me  to  give  them  their  wine  and  meat  if  there 
was  n't  enough  for  everybody.  How  can  you  pun- 
ish birds  like  that  when  they  break  loose  on  land  ? 
For  four  days  the  men  of  the  Pamir  drank  water 
and  ate  beans  or  the  rice  that  was  left  from  the 
Hindus,  and  nothing  besides,  for  the  storeroom  was 
cleaned  out.  Fourgues  gave  all  his  rum,  his  marc, 
his  cigarettes,  and  his  cigars.   I,  who  had  n't  any- 

74 


THE  ANZACS 

thing,  turned  over  my  handkerchiefs  and  shirts  for 
dressings.  We  were  lucky,  for  not  one  died  in  the 
crossing,  because  it  was  fine  weather  all  the  way  and 
because  Fourgues  went  very  slowly  in  order  not  to 
shake  the  wounded. 

They  were  nearly  all  fellows  from  Australia  or  New 
Zealand  —  bones,  height,  and  not  much  fat.  Those 
who  got  better  told  us  a  little  of  their  affairs.  They 
had  thought  they  were  leaving  the  Antipodes  to  de- 
fend old  England  on  the  front  of  France  and  they 
did  n't  at  all  expect  to  fight  the  Turks  in  a  country 
where  it  can't  be  done.  Even  though  mere  privates 
are  paid  five  or  six  francs  a  day,  the  fellows  still 
find  that  it  was  not  chic  to  give  them  a  job  "without 
any  chance,"  as  they  say.  But  all  that  will  be  squared 
later;  for  the  moment  they  are  happy  because  after 
Malta  they  hope  to  visit  London,  which  they  have 
never  seen. 

At  Malta  they  were  all  quickly  landed.  It  can't 
be  denied,  the  English  squander  money  and  con- 
sider war  a  sport  instead  of  a  vital  matter  as  we  do, 
but  they  have  absolutely  princely  service  in  the  rear. 
In  their  Gibraltar,  Malta,  and  Egyptian  establish- 
ments one  is  obliged  to  recognize  this.  The  Pamir 
was  scarcely  in  port  when  we  were  invaded  by  doc- 
tors and  nurses  by  the  dozen,  and  if  we  were  able 
to  care  little  for  them  on  board,  I  am  not  worrying 
about  how  they  will  fare  at  Malta.  But  I  find  that 
country  most  uninteresting  and  can't  understand 
why  all  the  fellows  are  so  enthusiastic  about  it. 

75 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Perhaps  because  after  fifty  or  sixty  days  at  sea  they 
would  enjoy  Patagonia  or  Timbuctoo.  The  whole 
island  is  stone,  no  vegetation,  hardly  two  good 
walks,  and  at  night  a  dirty  concert-hall  where  you 
are  all  packed  in  like  herring.  You  must  be  better 
acquainted  with  it  than  I,  for  you  are  known  —  to 
your  advantage  —  by  the  waiters  of  the  resort  where 
you  broke  several  saucers,  who  laughed  when  I 
asked  them  if  you  had  passed  that  way.  It  looks  as 
though  I  shall  never  meet  you,  for  there  were  not 
a  few  big  French  ships  in  the  port,  but  not  a  sign 
of  the  Auvergne. 

They  told  me  that  you  were  flying  the  admiral's 
flag  now,  the  admiral's  ship  having  gone  into  dry- 
dock  and  that  you  are  promenading  along  the  coast 
of  Crete.  Better  luck  next  time,  old  man. 

As  for  us,  we  left  our  shells,  although  the  Eng- 
lish warship  had  sailed  for  Portsmouth  to  be  dis- 
mantled, as  it  would  have  taken  a  good  six  months 
before  she  could  fire  a  gun  again.  She  was  pretty 
well  smashed.  The  youms  wanted  us  to  go  back  to 
England  with  the  ammunition,  but  Fourgues  would 
n't  go!  He  said  that  with  the  heat  and  without  any 
means  of  ventilating  the  holds,  he  would  not  keep 
the  shells  on  the  Pamir  for  fear  one  of  these  days 
she  would  blow  up  without  warning.  The  authori- 
ties kicked,  saying  that  the  ammunition  would  stay 
on  their  hands  in  Malta,  no  other  ship  having  guns 
of  the  necessary  model.  But  when  Fourgues  gets 
anything  into  his  head  neither  God  nor  the  Devil 

76 


A  LETTER  FROM  LA  ROCHELLE 

can  get  it  out,  so  they  were  obliged  to  unload  all  the 
ammunition.  Now  we  are  empty,  but  it  is  probable 
that  they  will  send  us  to  the  Levant  again  where 
everybody  pretends  that  decisive  operations  are  to 
take  place  which  will  put  the  thing  through  this 
time.  Fourgues  is  n't  sure  of  that  and,  to  speak  of 
myself,  neither  am  I.  It  would  be  better  if  they 
knew  more  clearly  what  they  were  going  to  do.  Here 
is  the  Pamir,  which  for  eight  days  has  earned  a  thou- 
sand francs  a  day,  doing  nothing!  Don't  you  call 
that  good  money  wasted  ? 

And  now  there  is  a  sirocco  which  is  laying  us  all 
on  our  backs.  Fourgues  and  I  spend  our  time  on 
the  bridge,  fanning  ourselves  and  watching  the 
manoeuvres  of  the  big  water-bruisers  which  come 
and  go.  One  has  to  acknowledge  that  it's  pretty 
work.  Fourgues  is  very  enthusiastic,  and  you  know 
he  manoeuvres  well  himself.  It's  like  Paris  in  front 
of  the  gare  Saint-Lazare,  there  are  so  many  little 
and  big  boats  and  never  a  collision. 

To  speak  again  of  myself,  I  have  had  a  letter  from 
La  Rochelle  and  my  fiancee  writes  that,  as  the  war 
seems  to  be  dragging  out,  there  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  wait  for  the  end  —  that  we  could  be  married 
on  the  first  opportunity.  I  should  like  to  very  much, 
but  I  want  your  advice.  Do  you  think  it  is  better 
to  wait  for  peace  and  not  marry  impulsively?  I 
have  laid  by  a  thousand  francs,  although  the  owner 
does  n't  give  us  a  radish  more  now  than  in  time  of 
peace.  With  this  we  could  start.    Let  us  hope  that 

77 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

you  can  be  in  France  for  the  wedding!  Write  me 
what  you  think.  Sometimes  I  get  discouraged,  be- 
ing always  on  the  go  and  never  knowing  when  it  is 
going  to  end.  I  wish  I  were  like  Fourgues.  When  he 
has  the  blues,  he  abuses  everybody  all  around  and 
it  passes  off.  But  I'm  not  that  way.  He  has  just 
gone  on  land  because  the  French  attache  wishes 
to  give  him  orders.  Perhaps  to-night  we  shall  know 
where  we  are  going.  But  the  navy  mail-boat  is  sail- 
ing at  once  and  I  don't  want  to  miss  it.  Take  care 
of  yourself,  old  man,  and  write. 

Archangel,  September  i5,  igi5 
My  dear  Friend,  — 

If  you  received  three  or  four  postcards  that  I 
have  sent  you  during  the  last  three  months,  you  may 
well  have  asked  yourself  where  the  Pamir  was  going 
to  stop.  Cabes,  Brest,  Trondhjem  —  they  are  hardly 
on  the  same  parallel  I  And  now  we  are  even  higher  up, 
but  there  is  nothing  beyond  this  and  you  need  n't 
be  afraid  that  we  shall  try  to  rediscover  the  North 
Pole.  Everything  is  going  very  well,  as  you  will 
learn.  We  have  seen  interesting  things;  it's  not 
too  warm  in  summer,  and  the  old  Pamir  and  all  of 
us  are  pleased  with  our  little  saunter.  At  Malta, 
Fourgues  came  back  with  the  order  to  leave  imme- 
diately for  Sfax  in  Tunis.  He  wanted  to  know  why, 
but  was  told  to  execute  orders  without  troubling 
himself  further.  So  we  got  up  steam  and  went  out 
of  the  harbor  that  night.  The  English  know  how  to 

78 


SUBMARINES  OR  NO  SUBMARINES 

protect  their  harbors  and  ports.  Wherever  there 
are  warships  or  loaded  merchant  vessels  at  anchor, 
they  don't  make  them  watch  for  submarines.  Nets, 
buoys,  an  effective  network  of  trawlers  on  guard  — 
and  the  people  inside  can  sleep  on  both  ears.  I 
wouldn't  say  that  all  this  is  sufficient  to  disperse 
submarines,  but  only  that  it  saves  needless  vigils. 
In  any  case,  it's  better  to  guard  against  under-sea 
boats,  acknowledging  their  existence,  than  to  say 
publicly  that  they  do  not  exist  and  actually  to  keep 
all  the  sailors  on  a  strain. 

But  those  are  just  my  ideas.  The  Pamir  set  out 
for  Sfax.  In  the  morning  we  passed  two  French  war- 
ships which  must  have  been  coming  from  Bizerta. 
Fourgues  noticed  that  they  were  steaming  straight 
ahead  on  their  course  and  said  that  was  a  good  way 
to  be  torpedoed.  I  reminded  him  that  the  navy 
doesn't  believe  in  submarines,  so  it  isn't  worth 
their  while  to  zigzag  and  retard  the  run.  Then  he 
asked  me  why,  if  they  don't  believe  in  them,  they 
keep  everybody  on  the  lookout  with  all  guns  set  and 
general  trembling;  that  they  ought  to  choose,  and 
if  there  are  any,  not  to  say  that  there  are  n't  and 
make  fools  of  all  the  sea-folk.  I  pass  the  problem 
on  to  you. 

At  Sfax  we  found  a  battalion  of  Algerian  sharp- 
shooters, Turcos,  and  other  little  niggers,  which  we 
were  to  transport  to  the  south  of  Tunis  with  their 
horses  and  all  their  outfit.  It  seems  that  since  the 
Italians  entered  the  war,  things  have  n't  gone  very 

79 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

well  in  Tripoli.  The  Touaregs  fell  on  them  and 
pushed  them  back  as  far  as  Tunis,  and  so  France  is 
getting  up  an  expeditionary  corps  down  there  in  the 
south  to  teach  the  Arabs  what's  what.  That  makes 
one  more  place  where  transports  are  needed.  They 
take  whatever  boats  pass  within  reach,  so  the  Pamir 
was  called  from  Malta.  At  first  they  made  us  carry 
whatever  we  found  wherever  we  were,  though  we 
never  found  anything  where  they  sent  us.  But  this 
time  we  left  and  arrived  with  a  purpose. 

The  Arabs  are  good  children  and  look  like  images 
in  their  coarse  yellow  and  blue  uniforms  and  they 
are  as  devil-may-care  as  the  year  forty.  For  offi- 
cers they  have  rough-and-readies  who  drink  hard 
and  cram  every  one  into  cells  the  moment  they  even 
look  as  though  they  were  grumbling.  They  would 
have  liked  to  go  to  the  Champagne  to  see  what  is 
happening  there  and  are  not  so  pleased  to  be  heading 
for  the  desert  to  fight  camels. 

But  they  don't  worry  either,  and  as  long  as  they 
fight  somebody  the  place  does  n't  matter.  The  Tou- 
aregs will  find  out  what  they  are  up  against! 

As  a  harbor,  Cabes  is  not  ideal  and  there  was  a 
moon  hot  enough  to  make  the  very  pebbles  perspire. 
I  wonder  how  the  Arabs  endure  it  with  their  cloth- 
ing of  wool  and  camels'  hair.  But  they  claim  that 
the  heavier  it  is,  the  cooler.  I  preferred  to  take  their 
word  for  it,  and,  as  I  was  half-melted,  found  it  sim- 
ply overpowering  to  stay  there  four  days  waiting 
for  orders.   Not  one  of  us  set  foot  on  land,  not  even 

80 


OFF  FOR  BREST 

Fourgues,  who  loves  to  stretch  his  legs  wherever 
we  go.  At  the  mere  idea  of  moving  in  that  furnace, 
every  one  elected  to  remain  half-naked  on  board. 
Finally  we  got  an  order  to  make  for  Brest.  Fourgues 
believed  it  was  a  joke  and  that  the  telegram  had  been 
improperly  transmitted;  but  it  was  Brest  all  right. 
He  thinks  the  owner  is  back  of  it,  trying  to  have  the 
Pamir  take  complicated  circuits  because  that  in- 
creases the  money  he  draws.  I  believe  he  is  right. 

So  we  were  off  for  Brest  and  very  glad  to  leave  the 
Mediterranean  just  as  we  were  beginning  to  cook. 
Moreover,  it  was  a  long  time  since  we  had  been  home 
or  read  the  papers:  everybody  thought  perhaps  we 
should  stay  awhile,  with  the  chance  of  circulating 
a  little  and  of  getting  news.  You  can't  imagine  how 
after  a  time  it  weighs  on  one  not  to  know  what's 
going  on.  On  the  Auvergne  you  get  the  radiograms 
from  France  and  elsewhere  and  there  are  lots  of 
messages  passing  around  which  explain  things.  But 
on  the  Pamir  we  are  like  blockheads  because  the 
papers  never  tell  anything  about  maritime  affairs 
anyway.  Of  course,  there  is  the  heading  "  Marine," 
and  then  —  nothing!  So  the  people  at  home  think 
we  are  doing  nothing.  As  they  are  absolutely  igno- 
rant about  the  sea,  it's  impossible  to  make  them 
understand  how  we  work  on  boats  like  yours  and  the 
Pamir.  The  navy  is  spoken  of  a  little  now,  but  all 
that  we  of  the  merchant  marine  have  in  the  news- 
sheets  is  when  a  cargo  boat  runs  aground  or  collides 
with  another  or  goes  down.  So  the  public  imagines 

81 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

that  merchant  vessels  pass  their  time  in  port  or  in 
multiplying  catastrophes;  whereas  they  are  at  least 
as  useful  as  the  postmen,  trainmen,  munitions  manu- 
facturers, and  the  like,  of  whom  the  papers  and  the 
ministries  are  all  the  time  talking.  It's  just  that 
those  fellows  are  on  the  spot  and  can  make  them- 
selves heard.  As  for  us,  they  are  dead  sure  they 
won't  see  us  arriving  with  our  boats  in  the  Place  de 
la  Concorde,  so  they  censor  the  things  that  concern 
us.  All  the  same,  it 's  not  fair.  But  here  I  am,  talk- 
ing politics!  I  get  that  from  Fourgues,  but  it's  also 
because  I  have  n't  been  to  La  Rochelle. 

Barely  arrived  in  Brest,  they  crammed  us  full  of 
rifles  for  the  Russians,  who  it  seems  are  fighting  in 
Poland  with  sticks  of  wood.  I  never  saw  so  many 
rifles  in  my  life,  and  there  are  whole  cargoes  like  that, 
going  from  England  and  other  places.  The  Pamir 
also  carried  revolvers,  machine  guns  —  all  the  small 
arms,  in  short.  The  cartridges  went  in  another  boat. 

The  authorities  were  hurrying  us  and  coming  on 
board  every  few  minutes  to  see  if  we  were  ready  to 
start,  as  we  had  to  go  with  all  speed  to  Trondhjem, 
in  Norway,  and  await  cargo  boats  from  America 
and  England  in  order  to  make  the  voyage  to  Russia 
with  them  under  the  protection  of  British  cruisers.  It 
was  very  pressing,  —  the  Russians  were  waiting  for 
their  rifles  and  it  was  a  question  of  minutes!  Not  one 
of  us  had  time  in  the  midst  of  all  this  to  go  once 
on  land,  excepting  Fourgues,  for  matters  of  business. 
The  more  we  loaded,  the  more  came.    We  put  the 

82 


ROUND  TO  TRONDHJEM 

cases  everywhere,  on  the  deck,  in  the  fo'c'sle,  in  all 
the  empty  cabins,  till  there  was  hardly  room  to  move. 
A  fire  would  have  been  nice,  with  all  those  wooden 
cases  and  well-oiled  implements!  But  Fourgues  says 
he  is  lucky,  and  it  would  certainly  seem  so. 

The  Pamir  left  without  my  having  needed  to  buy 
a  railroad  time-table  and  it  made  my  heart  ache  to 
pass  the  Goulet.  My  fiancee  will  think  that  it  was 
because  I  did  n't  want  to,  for  she  is  like  all  the  civil- 
ians, who  imagine  that  one  does  as  one  pleases.  .  .  . 
But  you  know  how  it  is  —  after  two  or  three  days 
you  get  into  harness  again  and  you  tell  yourself 
that  it  will  come  out  all  right  some  day.  As  the 
Pas  de  Calais  isn't  safe,  they  ordered  us  to  go  to 
Trondhjem  by  way  of  the  Irish  Channel,  and  we 
saw  some  English  destroyers  cruising  on  the  spot 
where  a  year  ago  they  announced  the  war  to  us. 

"  Perhaps  they  are  the  same ! "  said  Fourgues.  "  Eh, 
my  boy,  we  have  blown  around  some  miles  since  that 
time  and  the  Pamir  is  still  on  the  job!"  And  that's 
the  truth. 

It  is  never  very  smooth  around  Norway,  but  the 
Pamir  was  so  heavy  that  the  combers  went  over  her 
without  her  ever  flinching.  She  was  as  slow  as  a  tor- 
toise, but  in  spite  of  that  we  got  to  Trondhjem  ahead 
of  time.  As  we  are  still  without  wireless,  Fourgues 
could  n't  know  whether  we  were  in  advance  of  the 
convoy  or  behind  it,  so,  after  rolling  for  a  day  in  sight 
of  the  coast,  he  put  into  the  fjord,  for  it  seemed 
hardly  worth  while  burning  coal  and  wearing  out 

83 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  boat  for  nothing.  The  semaphore  signalled  us 
that  the  convoy  had  not  been  seen  passing  at  sea 
and  that  we  should  be  notified.  So  Fourgues  was 
relieved  and  proceeded  to  anchor  at  the  farther  end, 
amongst  the  other  ships  waiting  there. 

We  waited  two  days  and  should  have  been 
rather  bored,  in  spite  of  the  bright  nights,  the  mid- 
night sun,  the  calm  waters,  and  all  those  things  which 
land-lubbers  tell  about  who  have  never  made  a  voy- 
age in  their  lives  nor  had  the  wind  slap  them  in  the 
face,  except  that  this  fellow  Fourgues  can't  drop 
anchor  anywhere  without  turning  up  an  old  acquaint- 
ance. At  Trondhjem  it  was  an  American  with  whom 
he  had  gone  on  a  spree  once  upon  a  time  on  the  coast 
of  Chili  and  who,  since  the  war,  was  plying  between 
the  United  States,  Norway,  and  Russia.  They  rec- 
ognized one  another  through  their  field-glasses  and 
the  American  —  Flamigan  or  Flannigan  —  came 
over  in  his  cutter.  The  two  old  cronies  fell  on  each 
other's  necks,  —  it  had  been  ten  or  twelve  years  since 
they  had  met,  —  and  all  the  time  we  stayed  in  the 
fjord,  Fourgues,  Flannigan,  and  I  could  n't  have  been 
pried  apart.  There  was  also  Flannigan's  mate,  who 
smoked  his  pipe,  drank  his  whiskey,  and  said  nothing. 
If  you  ever  meet  Flannigan,  go  right  at  him  without 
mincing  things.  He  has  a  tongue  loose  at  both  ends 
and  no  fear  of  saying  what  he  thinks. 

Fourgues  asked  him  at  once  if  he  had  been  to  Ger- 
many, but  he  swore  by  all  the  gods  that  he  had  n't, 
though  he  carries  merchandise  wherever  his  company 

84 


FLANNIGAN,  THE  AMERICAN 

orders  him  without  feeling  obliged  to  ask  to  whom  it 
goes.  He  claimed  that  he  had  not  been  beyond  Hol- 
land or  Denmark,  but  that's  not  just  certain.  He 
might  have  said  it  so  as  not  to  hurt  us,  for  he  loves 
France,  England  a  little  less,  —  having  an  Irish 
father, — but  above  all  is  an  American,  and  told  us 
a  lot  of  things  by  which  it  would  be  well  for  France 
to  profit.  It  was  amusing,  all  the  same,  to  hear  some 
one  on  affairs  in  the  North,  after  having  listened  to 
Plantat  —  I  believe  I  told  you  of  him  —  on  those 
of  the  Orient,  with  an  interval  of  only  four  months. 
In  this  way  one  gets  ideas  about  what  is  going  on 
just  outside  the  war  and  what  is  being  thought  here 
and  there. 

You  won't  mind  if  I  tell  you  what  I  learn  in  one 
place  and  another,  will  you?  You  are  n't  obliged  to 
believe  any  of  it,  although  I  write  nothing  but  what 
I  see  or  hear.  And  then,  you  know,  fellows  such  as 
Plantat  and  Flannigan  are  like  uncensored  news- 
papers, so  there  is  more  chance  of  their  speaking  the 
truth. 

Flannigan  assures  us  that  the  Germans  don't  navi- 
gate much  any  more  because  they  won't  risk  their 
merchant  vessels  in  waters  where  the  Allies  are  sure 
to  nab  them  sooner  or  later;  but  that  in  the  main  it 's 
a  clever  trick  to  guarantee  themselves  ships  that  are 
not  worn  out,  that  are  in  a  way  almost  new,  in  order 
to  take  over  the  commerce  everywhere  after  the  war 
when  all  our  merchant  vessels  are  on  their  backs. 
And  at  bottom,  Flannigan  can't  be  wrong,  for  if  all 

85 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  ships  are  made  to  trudge  like  the  Pamir,  they 
will  hold  out  as  they  can,  but  those  of  the  Boches  will 
be  in  quite  a  different  state.  Fourgues  adds  that  it's 
not  worth  while  trying  to  deny  it,  as  the  Allied  na- 
tions aren't  building  a  single  ship,  and  anyway  a 
ship  can't  be  put  together  in  five  minutes  like  a  regi- 
ment. 

So  from  that  side,  if  we  don't  do  something  in  ad- 
vance, we're  sure  to  be  skinned  by  the  Boches  when 
peace  first  comes,  for  they'll  immediately  take  up 
all  their  former  traffic  as  well  as  all  that  we  have  lost. 
The  Germans  are  saying  this  among  the  neutrals, 
and  what  is  more,  according  to  Flannigan,  their  big 
commercial  and  industrial  firms  in  Saxony  or  West- 
phalia are  at  present  sending  all  over  the  world  cat- 
alogues of  products  to  be  delivered  during  the  war, 
from  four  to  six  months  after  the  order.  Is  n't  that 
the  limit?  Fourgues  told  Flannigan  it  was  German 
bluff!  But,  no  indeed!  Flannigan  went  over  to  his 
ship  to  look  for  bills  of  lading  of  merchandise  loaded 
at  Rotterdam,  Bergen,  or  elsewhere  in  the  neutral 
countries,  and  proved  to  us,  evidence  in  hand,  that  he 
had  transported  cargoes  of  products  made  in  Ger- 
many since  the  war  and  that  he  was  not  the  only  one. 
It  was  going  to  Brazil,  the  United  States,  or  wherever 
there  were  purchasers.  He  even  stated  that  there 
had  passed  into  France  by  way  of  the  neutral  coun- 
tries certain  hundreds  of  thousands  of  tons  for  which 
we  had  paid  with  our  good  money.  What  are  we  to 
believe,  old  man,  when  the  newspapers  and  the  min- 

86 


GERMAN  INFORMATION 

isters  and  the  rest  are  always  chanting  to  us  that 
Germany  is  economically  ruined  and  dying  of  star- 
vation? Flannigan  can't  be  lying,  for  the  neutrals 
have  to  get  merchandise  from  somewhere  while  France 
is  producing  nothing  and  England  has  all  she  can  do 
looking  after  herself.  As  to  food,  Flannigan  says  that 
famine  in  Germany  makes  a  good  story,  but  that 
we  had  better  tighten  the  blockade  if  we  want  them  to 
tighten  their  belts.  All  this  is  not  very  pleasant  to 
hear,  but  when  the  person  who  says  it  is  sincere  and 
has  seen  things,  one  can  only  regret  that  it's  not 
known  at  home  and,  in  any  case,  that  nothing  is  done 
to  remedy  it.  This  is  not  to  say  that  they  are  going 
to  beat  us,  but  just  that  we  ought  to  keep  them  from 
laughing  at  us. 

And  they  are  n't  depriving  themselves,  as  we  saw 
clearly  in  the  German  papers  Flannigan  brought  from 
his  boat  and  which  he  translated  to  us  by  the  hour, 
as  neither  Fourgues  nor  I  know  the  language.  I  '11 
not  tell  all  that,  because  you  must  know  what  they 
are  saying  from  the  wireless  communications  received 
on  the  Auvergne.  But  there  are  a  lot  of  little  details 
by  which  one  can  see  how  they  pull  the  strings  and 
how  we  move  accordingly.  For  instance,  we  are  for- 
bidden to  say  where  the  English  fleet  is.  Well,  the  illus- 
trated penny  papers  present  the  Germans  with  photo- 
graphs of  the  English  fleet,  the  names  of  all  the  ships, 
their  anchorage,  the  number  of  their  guns,  and  every- 
thing. No  one  in  France  knows  the  names  of  the 
French  generals  in  command  of  the  armies  nor  the 

87 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

number  of  sectors,  but  the  German  papers  serve  this 
up  to  their  readers  every  morning.  As  to  maritime 
espionage,  Flannigan  repeated  a  hundred  times  that 
the  Germans  know  more  than  no  matter  what  high 
admiral  of  the  Entente,  and  that  before  the  news  of 
the  movement  of  an  Allied  cargo  boat  or  warship 
reaches  Paris  or  London  it  is  known  in  Berlin  and 
corresponding  orders  have  been  given. 

It  would  be  nothing  if  they  stopped  there,  but 
Flannigan  says  they  have  understood  that  the  mari- 
time problem  will  be  solved  for  them  by  the  subma- 
rine. He  gave  us  details  of  such  precision  that  we  saw 
very  well  he  had  been  in  there  and  had  heard  the 
Germans  talk  at  home.  Then  he  recollected  himself. 
But  one  thing  is  certain,  the  Germans  are  construct- 
ing a  formidable  type  of  submarine  with  guns,  mines, 
etc.,  and  though  time  is  needed  to  manufacture  a 
series  of  such  craft,  within  a  definite  period  they  will 
have  something  thoroughly  nasty  ready  in  the  way 
of  under-sea  warfare. 

Fourgues  repeated  to  Flannigan  how  he  had  been 
made  fun  of  at  the  Navy  Department  in  Paris  when 
he  talked  of  submarines,  and  Flannigan  answered 
that  it  was  our  business  if  we  wanted  to  wait  till  the 
show  began,  for  the  Germans  would  n't  hesitate  to 
announce  it  and  that  when  we  were  once  in  the  soup  it 
would  n't  do  us  any  good  to  call  them  pirates.  They 
would  simply  go  on  sinking  our  ships.  In  regard  to 
piracy,  Flannigan,  who,  being  a  neutral,  is  above  all 
a  partisan  of  the  freedom  of  the  seas,  says  that  every- 

88 


INTERNATIONAL  LAW 

body  is  laughing  at  the  Allies  with  our  scruples  of 
the  Hague,  and  that  the  Germans  won't  be  any  more 
abashed  on  sea  than  on  land,  if  they  have  the  means, 
because  the  victor  will  make  the  new  international 
laws  and  because,  with  their  submarines,  they  will 
soon  show  us  that  the  old  ones  no  longer  count. 
Flannigan  reasoned  well:  — 

"You  established  your  German  frontier  by  the 
Treaty  of  Frankfort  and  you  announced  this  diplo- 
matically to  the  world.  Did  that  hinder  Germany 
from  invading  you  where  she  wanted  to,  or  you  from 
entering  Alsace  which  you  had  recognized  as  a  Ger- 
man possession  ?  Therefore,  in  the  rigors  of  war  trea- 
ties no  longer  mean  anything,  for  your  first  effort 
is  to  destroy  them.  And  so  why  are  you  always  chant- 
ing about  the  international  laws  ?  Germany  does  n't 
give  a  hang  and  is  counting  on  victory  to  change 
them  to  her  advantage.  Why  don't  you  do  the  same  ? 
Everything  that  links  you  with  Germany  is  destroyed. 
Her  signature  is  no  longer  valid,  yet  you  continue  to 
embarrass  yourselves  with  it  till  the  whole  world  be- 
lieves that  it  is  Germany  who  makes  war  while  you 
follow  after,  six  months  or  a  year  behind.  It's  like 
their  cards  for  meat,  sugar,  the  census,  and  all  that, 
of  which  your  papers  poke  fun,  saying  that  Germany 
is  at  the  end  of  her  strength  and  that  next  winter 
she  will  be  dead  —  you  will  come  to  that,  too,  if  the 
war  goes  on.  But  Germany,  who  prepared  for  war 
during  peace,  is  preparing  for  peace  during  war.  She 
does  at  once,  without  seeming  to  be  forced  to  it,  that 

89 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

which  you  will  be  forced  and  constrained  to  do  by 
circumstances.  The  same  with  asphyxiating  gas, 
liquid  fire,  and  all  the  horrors  she  employs;  when  your 
poilus  have  had  enough  of  dying  like  flies,  you  will 
understand  that  it  is  as  natural  to  kill  with  fire  and 
poison  as  with  shells  and  balls.  In  short,  my  boys,  if 
you  don't  want  to  have  it  go  on  for  years  and  if  you 
want  the  victory,  bestir  yourselves  a  little,  for  Ger- 
many is  not  going  to  omit  a  single  means  of  tor- 
menting you." 

I  should  never  get  through  telling  you  all  that 
Flannigan  said,  and  all  was  confirmed  during  a  walk 
we  took  with  him  on  shore.  We  talked  with  Nor- 
wegians who  had  been  in  Germany.  They  told  us 
about  the  Zeppelins  that  are  going  up  and  down  the 
North  Sea  and  the  Baltic  every  day,  whereas  there  is 
not  a  single  balloon  around  England  or  France. 

So,  of  course,  it  is  not  worth  while  to  add  that  we 
shall  have  them  at  sea. 

As  soon  as  an  English  destroyer  arrives  in  the 
North  Sea,  the  Zeppelins  announce  it  in  the  ports  and 
nothing  is  left  outside  but  submarines  and  mines. 
Seriously,  naval  warfare  is  not  what  it  was,  old  man, 
but  the  Boches  are  the  only  ones  who  seem  to  have 
perceived  this.  The  Norwegians  and  the  Swedes  who 
were  there  did  not  say  much  —  out  of  politeness, 
because  we  were  French,  but  we  understood  that 
they  think  Germany  has  the  advantage,  and  that, 
after  having  chosen  to  make  war,  she  fights  better 
than  we. 

90 


UNDER  CONVOY  TO  ARCHANGEL 

Fourgues  and  I  remembered  all  this  when  we  left 
and  we  discussed  it  till  we  got  to  Archangel.  The 
Pamir  overtook  the  convoy  at  sea  ten  miles  from 
Trondhjem  and  we  went  around  Norway  together. 
There  were  two  English  cruisers  and  four  destroyers 
to  escort  fourteen  merchant  vessels.  It  was  a  fine 
convoy  and  all  those  ships  together  looked  like  a 
naval  squadron,  but  the  people  who  decide  the  forma- 
tion of  convoys  would  do  well  not  to  group  boats  go- 
ing fifteen  knots  with  those  which  can  make  seven  or 
eight  only  by  breaking  their  necks.  After  two  days' 
sailing,  the  Pamir,  which  was  about  in  the  middle, 
began  to  lose  sight  of  those  the  farthest  in  advance, 
though  not  more  so  than  of  those  which  were  behind. 
The  ships  of  convoy  rushed  from  the  north  to  the 
south  to  put  us  in  order.  We  got  together  as  well  as 
we  could,  but  after  the  North  Cape  there  was  a  little 
session  of  rough  seas  and  rolling  and  pitching  and  no 
more  to  be  seen  than  in  a  tunnel.  It  lasted  twenty 
hours,  and  when  the  weather  was  fine  again,  there 
were  only  six  of  us  out  of  the  fourteen.  The  fast  ones 
had  run  ahead;  the  cripples  had  simply  disappeared. 
Naturally  none  of  the  absent  had  wireless  and  the 
war-ships  spent  three  days  hunting  for  them.  There 
was  one  with  a  damaged  helm  that  had  stuck  on  the 
pointed  rocks  up  there  and  split  in  two.  The  people 
were  fished  out,  but  there's  no  danger  of  the  cargo 
getting  to  the  Russian  front. 

Finally  our  convoy  arrived  at  Archangel  all  in  a 
line  more  or  less,  in  bunches  of  three  or  four.  It  is 

91 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  best  time  up  here.  After  a  month  and  a  half  or 
two  months,  everything  will  be  frozen  over,  literally 
and  figuratively.  But  it's  not  with  fourteen  car- 
goes nor  fifty  nor  a  hundred  that  one  could  give  the 
Russians  what  they  need!  The  fleet  of  the  whole 
world  would  not  be  enough,  but  it  is  well  to  give  them 
all  we  can.  It  may  teach  them  —  them  and  ourselves 
as  well  —  to  let  the  Germans  get  in  everywhere!  It 
seems  that  at  the  declaration  of  war  three  fourths 
of  their  factories  were  stopped  because  it  was  the 
Germans  who  ran  them.  Mechanics  can't  be  taught 
in  forty-eight  hours,  as  I  know  after  my  experience 
with  the  turnspit  of  the  Pamir;  and  if  you  add  that 
the  Boches  simply  appropriated  all  their  factories 
in  Poland,  you  can  see  why  the  Pamir  and  her  pals 
must  fly  to  Archangel  with  war-material.  They 
loaded  us  at  Brest  without  even  giving  me  forty- 
eight  hours  to  go  to  La  Rochelle,  under  pretext  that 
the  Russians  were  waiting  for  us  as  for  the  Messiah. 
But  here  there's  no  hurry.  They  have  already  taken 
twenty  days  to  unload  a  part  of  the  fourteen  ships 
and  are  not  nearly  through.  At  the  time  of  writing, 
the  Pamir  has  had  only  her  forward  hold  emptied  — 
the  aft  hold  can  wait!  They  sent  us  away  from  the 
docks  because  of  another  convoy  which  had  arrived 
in  the  meantime  and  which  they  began  to  unload. 
When  all  these  boats  are  half  emptied,  you  may  be 
sure  they  won't  get  away  —  they  will  simply  mould 
in  a  corner. 
And  whether  they  hurry  or  not,  it's  all  the  same. 
92 


RUSSIAN  OFFICERS  AT  ARCHANGEL 

The  things  lie  on  the  docks  in  piles  in  the  rain  and 
the  wind.  From  time  to  time  a  train  comes  along 
in  a  leisurely  manner,  loads  on  a  little  pile  without 
hurrying  itself,  and  starts  away  again  in  two  or  three 
days.  If  it  ever  reaches  the  Carpathians  it  will  be 
because  the  railroad  goes  downhill.  Everywhere  it's 
the  same  thing.  They  say  that  Russia  is  great,  that 
she  is  invincible,  that  it  will  take  ten  years,  that  the 
Boches  will  get  to  Moscow  . . .  Nitchevo  !  Napoleon 
went  away  again  and  the  Russian-Japanese  business 
was  n't  a  defeat.  Such,  old  man,  is  the  country  where 
I  find  myself  at  present! 

Fourgues  could  hardly  stand  it  at  first  to  see  the 
Pamir  lying  by.  Now  he  has  found  some  friends, 
Russian  navy  and  army  officers  who  come  on  board 
and  with  whom  he  lunches  on  land.  When  I  ask  him 
if  we  are  going  to  stay  here,  he  answers,  "Nitchevo!" 
in  his  Midi  accent  and  the  Russians  simply  double  up. 
They  drink  hard  and  try  to  get  him  to  do  the  same, 
but  Fourgues  never  loses  his  head  and  uses  the  occa- 
sion to  beat  them  at  poker.  If  they  will  poison  them- 
selves up  here,  he  will  seize  the  opportunity  to  in- 
crease his  income,  the  old  fox.  Mornings,  during  the 
cleaning,  he  tells  me  what  they  said  when  they  were 
half  full.  Not  a  few  of  them  are  pro-German,  espe- 
cially among  the  nobility.  It  seems  that  there  have 
been  formidable  scandals  at  court  and  in  the  minis- 
tries. When  I  try  to  pump  him,  Fourgues  answers 
that  he  ought  not  to  say  anything,  but  that  he  is 
glad  he  is  French,  for,  although  at  home  we  do  all 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

sorts  of  stupid  things,  at  least  no  one  is  working  for 
the  King  of  Prussia.  As  Fourgues  never  jokes  about 
such  matters,  I  believe  he  must  have  been  hearing 
some  pretty  raw  stories  —  about  the  railroads  in 
particular.  Cars  are  lost  in  Russia,  and  even  whole 
trains,  without  any  one  knowing  what  has  become 
of  them.  And  what  would  they  say  in  Brest  if  they 
knew  that  we  lay  here  more  than  twenty  days  with 
their  rifles! 

Finally,  yesterday,  Fourgues  said  that  he  had  had 
all  he  could  stand  of  Archangel,  vodka,  and  poker, 
—  perhaps  he  had  been  losing!  —  and  he  got  hold  of 
an  officer  of  the  port  who  came  along  with  his  mouth 
full  of  hot  air,  and  was  promised  that  the  Pamir  will 
be  unloaded  to-morrow.  I  dare  say  that  means  eight 
days,  but,  at  any  rate,  as  one  of  the  English  cruisers 
will  sail  this  evening  for  Youmanie,1 1  shall  give  her 
this  letter,  having  finished  my  twenty  pages.  You 
can't  call  yourself  neglected,  —  eh,  old  boy  ?  But 
you  are  good,  too,  sending  me  as  much  news  as  you 
can  and  your  books.  I  have  finished  the  first  volume 
of  the  maritime  history.  I  will  write  about  it  if  I 
remember.  Except  for  reading,  I  am  bored  to  death, 
for  at  the  rate  at  which  the  Pamir  has  been  going,  I 
wonder  where  on  earth  they  will  send  us  next,  and 
in  the  meantime,  what  is  to  become  of  La  Rochelle  ? 
Let  us  hope  that  by  the  end  of  the  year,  we  shall  have 
peace  or  the  wedding!  Don't  make  fun  of  me,  old 
boy.  I  have  had  about  all  I  can  stand. 
1  England. 
94 


THE  SUBMARINE  DANGER 

Mudros,  December  18,  191 5 
Here  we  are  back  in  the  Levant  after  all,  but 
not  without  adventures,  and  it's  really  no  joke  to 
have  made  the  grand  tour  of  Europe  from  Archangel 
to  the  Dardanelles  only  to  fall  into  our  present 
scrape.  At  Toulon  I  received  your  long  letter  of  the 
end  of  September  in  response  to  mine  from  Arch- 
angel, and  I  thank  you.  I  shall  speak  of  it  if  I  have 
time,  but  for  the  moment  I  am  going  to  tell  you  the 
adventures  of  the  old  Pamir  for  the  last  three  months. 
You  might  call  us  the  Wandering  Jews!  The  more 
we  go,  the  more  they  grab  merchant- vessels  wherever 
they  find  them,  putting  no  matter  what  on  the  deck 
just  so  long  as  it  leaves  —  and  ale  done  ! 

Fourgues  finally  got  his  stuff  unloaded  at  Arch- 
angel and  succeeded  in  sailing  without  the  convoy. 
He  said  it  was  n't  worth  while  losing  time  with  boats 
that  can't  get  up  any  speed,  and  that  when  there 
are  too  many  water-bruisers  and  not  enough  convoy 
ships  it's  just  a  little  bit  too  good  a  target  for  sub- 
marines. Wherever  we  touched  land  I  perceived  that 
Fourgues  had  not  been  far  wrong  when  he  said,  at 
the  beginning,  that  the  submarines  were  going  to 
count  later  on.  Even  the  officials  are  finding  them 
embarrassing.  What  would  happen  if  all  those 
leather  cushions  had  to  circulate  at  sea!  Perhaps  they 
would  find  something  to  say  besides:  "Pshaw!  Don't 
believe  everything  you  hear,  and,  anyway,  we  sink 
so  many  that  soon  there  won't  be  any  more!"   Of 

95 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

course,  after  that  there's  nothing  to  do  but  pull  in 
your  ladder!  Silence  in  the  journals  and  everywhere 
else! ...  I  tell  you  all  my  little  ideas  as  the  occasion 
gives  rise  to  them. 

The  Pamir  was  told  to  go  to  Newcastle  for  orders 
and,  in  case  there  were  none,  to  load  with  coal.  We 
had  been  pretty  well  shaken  up  on  account  of  our 
empty  hold.  On  the  return  trip  we  met  not  a  few 
boats  going  to  Archangel.  They  needed  to  hurry,  for 
the  ice  will  soon  begin,  and  if  the  Russians  do  not 
set  themselves  seriously  to  work,  they  can't  break 
the  Germans  with  what  they  received  this  summer. 
What  good  does  it  do  not  to  tell  the  public  the  truth, 
when  sooner  or  later  it  is  sure  to  come  out  ?  They  tell 
us  that  in  two  weeks  or  in  three  months  everything 
is  going  to  go  wonderfully,  and  then,  three  months 
later,  things  are  just  the  same  or  a  little  bit  worse. 
And  on  whom  shall  the  public  lay  the  blame  ?  On 
those  who  have  deceived  it!  Or  perhaps  everybody 
knows  that  matters  are  not  as  they  should  be  and 
that  it's  not  worth  while  denying  it.  Then  the  public 
is  obliged  to  believe  the  leaders  are  to  blame,  because 
they  didn't  know  how  to  disentangle  themselves. 
There's  no  way  out  of  it,  but  those  who  govern  are 
the  ones  that  are  on  the  wrong  track. 

At  Newcastle  they  told  us  to  go  to  Southampton 
to  take  the  equipment  for  the  English  expeditionary 
forces  in  France.  We  had  just  enough  coal  to  get  us 
across  and  the  Pamir  went  down  the  North  Sea  and 
the  Pas  de  Calais,  the  papers  everywhere  saying  that 


THE  ENGLISH  BESTIRRING  THEMSELVES 

the  Pas  de  Calais  is  completely  closed  to  German  sub- 
marines by  means  of  nets  and  a  host  of  perfected 
schemes;  saying  too,  that  to  reach  the  Atlantic  or 
the  Mediterranean,  they  will  have  to  go  around  by 
way  of  Scotland,  and  as  they  haven't  sufficient 
radius  of  action  there  is  nothing  further  to  be  feared 
from  them.  I  don't  know  much  about  it,  but  having 
seen  what  the  Germans  have  done  elsewhere,  I  expect 
them  to  find  some  way  of  getting  through  those  per- 
fected dodges  and  also  of  constructing  submarines 
that  will  go  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  It's  as  plain 
as  the  nose  on  your  face  and  to  say  the  contrary  is 
to  act  the  ostrich.  Fourgues  says  there  will  be  a 
painful  awakening,  but  that  everybody  will  put  it 
off  onto  the  Boches  instead  of  recognizing  that  we 
have  n't  taken  proper  precautions.  He  gets  into  fine 
rages,  but  as  for  me,  if  I  can  only  go  to  La  Rochelle 
I  ask  for  nothing  more. 

At  Southampton  we  took  on  automobiles  and 
tractors  for  the  English  army  and  carried  them  to 
Havre.  I  had  time  in  England  to  make  a  trip  on  land, 
where  there  are  posters  everywhere,  begging  folks  to 
enlist.  Just  the  same  the  English  look  more  as  though 
they  were  bestirring  themselves  than  last  year  when 
they  regarded  this  as  a  colonial  war.  That's  not  to 
say  they  have  as  yet  been  affected  as  seriously  as  we. 
They  still  leave  a  great  many  Boches  at  large,  their 
business  firms  continue  to  ship  cargoes  to  the  neutral 
neighbors  of  Germany,  and  then,  they  can't  with 
one  stroke  make  over  an  army,  all  ready  to  fight. 

97 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

The  majority  of  their  regular  officers  have  already 
been  killed  and  they  are  obliged  to  make  captains 
and  commandants  out  of  good  cricket  and  golf  play- 
ers. It  will  take  time  for  them  to  form.  As  to  equip- 
ment, it's  the  same  thing  —  they  have  hardly  begun 
to  mobilize  their  factories  for  war  production  because 
they  did  not  want  to  stop  British  exportation.  But 
we  can't  say  much,  for  we  have  done  the  same  and 
it's  hardly  a  matter  of  weeks  since  France  began  to 
go  to  England,  America,  and  Spain  for  materials  — 
where  there  are  plenty.  The  Germans  went  to  work 
at  the  right  moment  and  we  lost  a  good  year. 

There  is  a  fine  mess  at  Havre  and  they  say  Rouen 
is  the  same.  Really  it's  astonishing  how  the  respon- 
sible people  let  cars  and  merchandise  pile  up  in  the 
ports.  That  comes  doubtless  from  the  general  igno- 
rance in  France  as  regards  all  maritime  matters  and 
also  from  the  fact  that  the  high  naval  officers  who 
command  the  commercial  ports  know  nothing  about 
traffic.  Fourgues  has  to  fight  to  get  his  stuff  unloaded 
at  Havre  every  time.  They  piled  it  in  a  heap  on  the 
dock,  and  when  we  left  it  was  still  there  in  the  rain. 

While  we  were  there  we  got  orders  to  go  to  Mar- 
seilles, to  get  a  load  for  the  army  of  the  Orient.  The 
Pamir  could  have  taken  from  the  wharf  at  Havre 
some  hundreds  of  tons  destined  for  Toulon  or  Mar- 
seilles; in  this  way  the  transportation  would  have 
cost  less.  But  everything  was  arranged  for  it  to  go 
by  rail  and  we  left  without  anything.  Once  more  we 
went  around  Spain  without  paying  for  our  trip,  and 


ADVANTAGES  OF  COPYING  THE  GERMANS 

even  so  arrived  ahead  of  time,  as  our  cargo  had  not 
all  reached  Marseilles  —  because  the  trains  were  held 
up  as  usual.  The  papers  may  relate  mountains  and 
marvels  about  the  preparations  made  and  all  the 
success  that  will  attend  us  on  all  the  fronts  next 
spring,  but  we  who  do  the  work  of  transporting  neces- 
sities see  plainly  that  not  with  our  present  manner 
are  we  going  to  surpass  the  Germans  in  speed. 

I  am  not  the  one  to  sin  through  admiration  of  the 
Boches,  and  if  for  no  other  reason  I  should  have  a 
grudge  against  them  for  the  dog's  life  they  have  made 
us  lead  for  a  year  and  a  half,  and  because  on  their 
account  I  don't  see  when  I  can  go  home.  But  just 
the  same,  there  are  things  they  do  better  than  we 
and  which  we  should  learn  from  them  if  we  don't 
want  to  lose  months  and  years.  How  does  it  help  us 
to  refuse  to  imitate  them  in  such  matters  as  are  as 
good  for  us  as  for  them  ?  We  shan't  become  savages 
by  merely  looking  ahead!  We  shan't  be  much  fur- 
ther along  when  we  shall  be  obliged  to  imitate  them. 
In  the  maritime  history  you  lent  me  I  read  recently 
that  the  Coalition  beat  Napoleon  because,  after  hav- 
ing been  whipped,  they  copied  him.  And  it  took 
them  fifteen  or  twenty  years,  and  if  they  had  caught 
on  sooner  it  would  n't  have  taken  so  long.  Why  is  it 
that  in  France  we  still  run  the  limited  and  express 
trains  which  I  saw  arriving  in  Havre  and  Marseilles  ? 
The  Norwegians  and  Swedes  told  us  that  for  a  long 
time  the  Germans  have  been  running  all  their  trains 
at  the  same  speed,  the  passengers  in  between  the 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

freight.  In  that  way  traffic  is  not  delayed,  whereas 
in  France,  with  the  idea  of  making  people  back  of 
the  lines  believe  that  the  war  is  being  won  like  a 
game  of  manilla,  they  put  on  a  lot  of  fast  trains 
which  are  only  of  use  for  the  slackers  and  which 
hold  up  the  shells  and  war-material  at  all  the  stations. 
So  how  can  you  expect  things  to  arrive  ? 

I  ruminated  about  all  this  when  the  Pamir  was 
sent  to  anchor  at  L'Estaque,  near  Marseilles,  for 
five  or  six  days,  as  there  was  n't  a  single  foot  of  un- 
encumbered dock  in  the  port  of  Marseilles  and  all 
because  of  the  obstructed  railroads.  One  day 
twenty-four  of  us  were  rolling  and  pitching  in  the 
mistral;  another  day  there  were  thirty-two,  empty 
and  loaded,  each  making  a  thousand  or  two  thou- 
sand francs  a  day  doing  nothing. 

I  tell  you,  if  a  Boche  submarine  came  into  this 
road,  which  is  open  and  without  protection,  along 
about  one  or  two  in  the  morning,  she  could  send  a 
good  half-dozen  of  craft  like  the  Pamir  to  the  bottom 
and  get  away  before  any  one  had  time  to  say  a  word! 
But  the  land-lubbers,  with  or  without  service  stripes, 
have  pronounced  it  all  a  pleasant  joke  and  have  said 
that  submarines  would  n't  dare  come  near  the  coast 
of  France,  either  here  or  on  the  Atlantic!  After  that, 
all  we  can  do  is  to  collect  ourselves  and  await  the 
torpedo  with  arms  folded. 

Finally  they  towed  us  from  L'Estaque  to  Mar- 
seilles, and  then,  as  the  authorities  had  made  us  sit 
for  nearly  a  week  without  doing  a  thing,  we  must 

100 


OFFICIAL  .GEOGRAPHY  .  •  ■  <  ;  A*, 

take  on  board  three  thousand  tons  of  cargo  right 
off,  without  unharnessing.  The  country  would  be  in 
danger  if  the  Pamir  was  n't  out  and  off  in  forty- 
eight  hours.  They  made  us  roll  down  into  our  hold 
the  contents  of  thirty  trains,  which  came  in  solemn 
procession,  night  and  day,  without  stopping.  The 
Pamir  was  away  off  at  the  end  of  the  earth  in  the 
basin  of  Arenc  and  all  the  stuff  was  for  Mudros  — 
carriages,  provisions,  shells,  guns,  shoes  —  every- 
thing, I  assure  you. 

They  were  tumbled  in  as  they  came  and  I  had 
to  stow  them.  You  can  imagine  how  easy  it  was. 
Fourgues  never  ceased  foaming  at  the  mouth,  saying 
that  if  we  had  bad  weather  the  cargo  would  start 
dancing  around  by  itself.  But  they  told  him  to  shut 
up,  and  in  choice  language!  There  was  one  train 
which  came  with  cases  for  Milo.  There  had  been 
a  mistake,  and  they  turned  out  not  to  be  for  the 
Pamir,  but  for  another  boat.  They  arrived  about 
midnight  of  the  second  night,  and  I  said  to  the 
officer  in  charge  that  it  must  be  an  error.  What  did 
I  get  ?  He  fished  me  up  like  a  cod,  saying  that  Mudros, 
Milo,  and  the  whole  shop,  they  were  all  in  the 
Orient,  and  that  he  was  ordered  to  pack  into  the 
Pamir  all  the  trains  that  came  and  that  I  was  not 
going  to  send  that  one  back  when  they  were  already 
late.  What  about  that  for  an  idea  of  geography! 

So  I  shipped  the  things  because  the  army  gentle- 
man ordered  me  to,  but  when  I  informed  Fourgues 
in  the  morning,  he  told  a  chap  in  the  navy  who  had 
101 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

come  to  give  us  our  orders  for  the  route.  And  the 
navy  chap  was  furious,  and  said  that  we  were  idiotic 
to  load  on  stuff  for  Milo  when  the  rest  of  the  material 
was  for  Mudros.  The  officer  had  gone  for  his  coffee. 
The  navy  chap  went  after  him  and  they  must  have 
exchanged  a  few  pleasantries.  At  last  it  was  agreed 
that  the  Pamir  should  stop  at  Milo  and  unload  the 
cases  and  then  go  on  to  Mudros.  We  closed  the  holds 
and  battened  down  the  hatches  and  were  ready  to 
leave  our  moorings  when  another  train  with  a  dozen 
cases  of  airplanes  pulled  in  and  came  alongside. 
The  non-commissioned  officer  in  charge  jumped  on 
board  and  asked  for  the  commander:  — 1 

"Are  you  the  Pamir?" 

"Rather,"  said  Fourgues. 

"All  right;  here  are  twelve  airplanes  for  you  to 
take." 

"Well,  mon  vieux,  we  can  tow  them  if  you  wish, 
but  as  for  taking  twelve  airplanes  on  board,  it's 
now  too  late,  our  hold  is  full." 

"Not  at  all!  I've  been  waiting  at  Miramar  for 
two  days  and  I  just  got  the  order  to-night  to  send 
them  by  the  Pamir.  It  is  of  the  utmost  urgency!" 

"  Oh,  yes.  And  how  long  has  your  utmost  urgency 
been  on  the  way  from  Paris?" 

"For  twenty-three  days!" 

What  can  one  do,  old  man  ?  Such  strokes  simply 
disarm  one!  When  Fourgues  heard  that  the  poor 
devil  had  been  on  the  great  railroads  of  France  for 
twenty-three  days  with  twelve  airplanes  in  his  arms, 

102 


A  BROADSIDE  FROM  FOURGUES 

he  said  we  would  take  all  we  could.  We  found  places 
for  six,  three  forward  and  three  aft.  The  cases  are 
regular  monuments,  and  when  they  dangle  at  the 
end  of  the  winch  you  have  to  watch  out  so  as  not  to 
get  a  corner  in  the  jaw.  And  to  stow  all  that!  They 
were  exactly  the  full  width,  however,  and  we  served 
lines  over  them  and  lashed  them  to  starboard  and 
port.  They  rose  as  high  as  the  bridge. 

At  this  point  our  old  friend  the  army  officer  re- 
turned to  the  charge  and  said  that,  as  the  Pamir  was 
ordered  to  take  all  twelve  cases,  we  must  load  the 
remaining  six  in  a  second  tier  on  top  of  the  first.  Then 
Fourgues  let  out  a  broadside.  He  produced  oaths 
that  I  had  never  heard  before  and  I  assure  you  they 
were  great!  He  said  that  his  boat  was  as  full  as  an 
egg;  that  it  was  not  the  custom  to  pile  cargo  higher 
than  the  masts;  that  he  had  to  see  to  navigate;  that 
he  was  not  sure  the  six  cases  we  had  would  n't  pitch 
overboard  with  the  first  good  blow,  and  that  the 
other  six  might  go  by  the  air-route,  perhaps,  but 
certainly  not  on  the  Pamir.  Thereupon  he  gave  the 
order  to  sail  and  we  skipped  out,  leaving  the  three 
citizens,  the  railroad-man,  the  army  officer,  and  the 
sailor,  giving  it  to  each  other  on  the  dock. 

Fortunately  we  had  no  really  bad  weather  from 
Marseilles  to  Milo  —  nothing  but  ordinary  rolling 
and  pitching,  just  enough  to  worry  us  about  the 
stowage  of  our  cargo.  We  could  hear  hollow  sounds 
of  boxes  knocking  around  the  hold  and  the  stuff 
must  have  been  in  a  nice  state.  We  didn't  open 
103 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

it  up,  but  it  will  be  lovely  and  we  are  the  ones  that 
will  catch  it!  But  Fourgues  will  make  plenty  of 
music,  for  he  doesn't  like  to  keep  still  when  it's 
somebody  else's  fault.  I  don't  understand  just  how 
the  airplanes  are  packed  in  their  cases.  Up  there 
on  the  deck  they  get  plenty  of  motion,  and  no  matter 
how  much  we  tighten  the  lines  with  which  they  are 
lashed,  every  time  the  boat  rolls  they  shift  a  little 
with  a  "Boom!" 

At  Milo  no  one  wanted  to  unload  the  cases  we 
had  taken  from  the  wrong  train  because  the  head  of 
the  military  unit  for  which  they  were  destined,  who 
should  have  been  there,  had  gone  away  several  days 
before.  We  have  n't  yet  been  able  to  ascertain  his 
whereabouts.  It's  the  same  old  thing  over  and  over 
—  enough  to  drive  you  mad! 

In  the  harbor  at  Milo  there  were  a  lot  of  war-ves- 
sels, —  French,  English,  Russian,  and  Italian,  — 
for  it  seems  we  are  ready  to  fall  upon  the  Greeks 
if  they  keep  on.  The  English,  who  got  here  first, 
did  n't  wait  long  before  installing  nets  and  a  barrier 
against  submarines.  It's  very  nice  to  say  in  the 
papers  and  from  the  rostrum  that  submarines  don't 
exist,  but  it's  better  to  take  precautions,  for  they 
are  beginning  to  sink  ships  a  little  bit  everywhere. 
Fourgues  says  he  should  prefer  to  be  in  the  wrong, 
but  that  everything  he  has  thought  about  it  is  be- 
ginning to  be  realized  and  that  it's  aggravating  to 
have  been  a  Cassandra  on  this  particular  point. 

All  this  time  the  Pamir  continues  to  be  without 
104 


GOOD-BYE  TO  THE  END  OF  TURKEY 

wireless  or  guns  or  anything  for  protection  and  she 
is  not  the  only  one.  At  Milo  and  at  Mudros,  where 
we  are  now,  out  of  every  ten  ships  seven  or  eight 
have  no  wireless,  and  I  want  to  tell  you  that  it's 
something  to  hear  the  captains  and  officers  of  those 
cargo-boats!  But  all  they  say  and  all  they  think, 
what  difference  does  it  make?  Everybody  knows 
they  will  keep  on  just  the  samel  If  they  are  done  for 
by  a  submarine  the  paper  will  say,  "Boche  piracy! ! 
Such  and  such  a  boat  sunk!  She  transported  no 
military  personnel!"  Tiens!  It's  simply  too  idiotic 
the  way  things  at  sea  are  run. 

The  Pamir  went  straight  on  to  Mudros  without 
unloading  anything.  You  can  have  no  idea  of  the 
moving  that's  going  on  all  over  the  country.  They 
are  evacuating  everywhere.  Good-bye,  Constanti- 
nople! Good-bye  to  the  end  of  Turkey!  Good-bye, 
Gallipoli,  the  Dardanelles,  the  coast  of  Asia!  Good- 
bye, everything!  All  the  material  and  personnel 
that  is  not  too  badly  damaged  is  going  to  Saloniki. 
We  are  going  to  save  Serbia  if  it  isn't  too  late. 
Suvla  is  evacuated.  The  English  left  millions  in 
material  which  they  set  on  fire.  Seddul-Bahr,  Kum- 
Kale,  and  Gaba  are  being  rolled  into  one  to  make  an 
army  of  the  Orient,  and  it's  not  a  bit  too  soon  to  put 
some  people  at  Saloniki,  for  where,  I  wonder,  are 
the  Boches  going  to  be  stopped  ?  It  seems  that  this 
was  an  idea  of  our  President  du  Conseil.  It's  a 
damned  good  thing  he  put  his  finger  on  the  spot, 
for  the  Dardanelles  business  was  done  for  several 
105 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

months  ago.  With  an  army  in  Saloniki,  and  a  French- 
English  army  at  that,  we  can  keep  the  Boches  from 
getting  down  any  farther.  What  could  n't  they  do 
in  the  Mediterranean,  I  wonder,  if  they  had  Greece 
and  the  Peloponnesus  ?  But  all  that  is  politics  again. 

The  Pamir  is  waiting  at  Mudros.  All  the  empty 
vessels  are  taken  to  hasten  the  evacuation.  We  are 
as  full  as  an  oyster,  and  we  are  left  here  because 
there's  no  room  at  Saloniki.  Where  should  we  un- 
load our  different  sorts  of  merchandise,  our  airplanes, 
and  our  victuals  ?  I  don't  know  any  better  than  you! 
But  one  thing  I  do  know  —  nothing  of  all  we  have 
brought  from  Marseilles  will  ever  reach  its  destina- 
tion! Oh,  it  will  be  used  somewhere  or  other,  but 
everything  in  this  country  is  upside  down  and  all 
the  Pamir  can  do  is  to  empty  her  hold  onto  the  dock 
designated  without  troubling  about  what  becomes 
of  it.  And  that's  not  very  gay,  old  man! 

And  how  long  are  we  going  to  stay  here?  Fourgues 
is  going  crazy,  but  that  does  n't  help  matters.  The 
other  ships  come  and  go,  but  the  Pamir  receives 
no  orders.  We  hope  she  will  go  to  Saloniki  and  give 
us  a  glimpse  of  what  is  going  on  there,  but  ever  since 
the  beginning  of  the  war  nothing  we  have  hoped  for 
has  happened,  so  I  don't  care  much  what  it  is  as 
long  as  it  can't  be  La  Rochelle. 

So  long,  old  man!  I  got  your  last  from  Bizerta 
when  the  Auvergne  was  in  dry-dock.  You  gave  me 
a  good  bit  of  navy  talk  and  I  should  like  to  comment 
on  it,  but  a  boat  i3  about  to  leave  for  Malta  and  I 

106 


ONE  CONSOLATION 

want  to  get  this  letter  off.  All  that  I  can  say  is  that 
it  seems  to  me  not  much  better  on  the  warships 
than  on  water-bruisers  like  the  Pamir.  May  God 
grant  that  on  land,  in  politics,  and  the  diplomatic 
service  they  are  cleverer  than  our  naval  chiefs!  My 
sole  consolation  is  that  the  Germans  seem  to  be 
more  pumpkin-headed  than  we;  else,  with  their  prep- 
aration and  our  mistakes  at  the  beginning,  they 
would  have  eaten  us  up  long  since.  Not  having  done 
so,  they  won't  be  able  to.  With  this  consoling 
thought  I  wish  you  a  Happy  New  Year  and  hope 
that  we  shall  see  each  other  in  1916.  Je  Vembrasse. 


PART  THREE 

Algiers,  January  3o,  1916 
My  dear  Friend,  — 

Guess  whom  I  met  yesterday!  I'll  give  you 
a  thousand  shots  at  it.  Blangy!  You  have  been 
asking  yourself  —  at  least  I  have  —  what  in  the 
world  had  become  of  the  old  rascal,  who  has  never 
given  us  a  sign  of  life.  I  ran  into  him  in  the  arcades 
and  I  started  to  blow  him  up.  He  maintained  that 
you  and  I  were  the  loafers  because  we  had  leisure, 
whereas  he  had  none.  I  soon  saw  that  he  had  n't 
changed  and  was  as  lazy  as  ever  about  writing.  As 
he  had  a  free  evening  we  took  our  aperitif  together 
and  he  invited  Fourgues  to  join  us  at  dinner.  Blangy 
is  n't  afraid  of  him  any  more,  now  that  he  is  in 
command  of  a  trawler;  indeed  he  treats  Fourgues 
quite  as  an  equal.  During  dinner  he  told  all  his  ad- 
ventures and  there  was  material  enough  to  fill  an 
almanac.  For  six  weeks  he  has  been  in  command 
of  a  half-rotten  trawler  as  big  as  a  piano,  with  a 
gun  as  heavy  as  a  pea-shooter,  which  would  n't  be 
capable  of  going  after  even  a  crippled  submarine. 
There  are  not  a  few  like  that,  says  Blangy,  espe- 
cially along  the  coasts  of  Africa  and  Tunis.  Most 
of  the  time  there  is  something  that  won't  go  — 
rudder,  truss,  steering-gear,  condenser,  pistons,  or 
boilers;  one  repairs  as  one  can.   For  the  rest,  there 

108 


A  NEW  ENGINEER 

are  storms  for  which  the  submarines  don't  give  a 
hang,  but  which  keep  the  poor  old  trawlers  from 
navigating.  So  you  can  see  just  what  our  surveil- 
lance against  the  submarine  amounts  to! 

Fortunately  the  papers  say  that  in  three  months 
not  one  will  be  left,  we  have  sunk  so  many!  Blangy 
is  not  of  this  opinion,  nor  Fourgues  either,  nor  I. 
I  can  write  you  this,  my  old  friend  of  the  Auvergne, 
for  I  have  a  sort  of  an  idea  you  think  the  same.  We 
are  not  officials,  we  four!  Blangy  says  to  send  you 
greeting,  and  he  laughed  when  I  told  him  that  on 
you,  the  seaman,  they  had  played  the  same  trick 
as  on  him,  putting  you  behind  a  gun  instead  of  on 
the  bridge.  He  hopes  that  you  will  also  get  a  trawler 
or  anything  else  that  will  make  you  navigate.  He 
is  satisfied  in  spite  of  his  misadventures  on  his  rotten 
raft.  He  feels  that  he  is  living.  His  fever  and  rheu- 
matism have  left  him,  and  he  asks  for  nothing  but 
the  opportunity  to  rake  a  submarine,  or  at  least 
that  it  should  n't  be  the  other  way  around! 

Having  given  you  enough  about  Blangy,  I  will 
return  to  the  adventures  of  the  Pamir  from  Mudros 
as  far  as  Algiers  —  that  is  to  say,  for  the  last  month 
and  a  half.  You  may  be  surprised  to  have  me  write 
so  soon  and  I'll  tell  you  why  at  once.  We  picked 
up  at  sea  the  crew  of  the  cargo  boat  Mer-Morte,  of 
the  same  company  as  ourselves,  which  had  been  tor- 
pedoed the  night  before.  In  one  of  the  boats  was 
Villiers,  engineer  of  the  Mer-Morte,  and  the  owner 
authorized  Fourgues  to  keep  him  on  board.  That 
109 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

being  the  case,  I  passed  half  my  work  over  to  him,  — 
the  engine,  that  is,  —  and  I  have  a  little  more  time. 
I  can  write  you  more  —  at  least,  if  it  does  n't  bore 
you,  in  which  case  you  have  only  to  warn  me! 

You  remember  that  I  wrote  of  the  Pamir  lying 
idle  at  Mudros  with  a  cargo  for  a  lot  of  different 
military  units.  The  shipment  had  not  yet  reached 
its  destination  because  we  arrived  in  the  midst  of 
moving.  Every  one  was  breaking  camp  —  every- 
where, Gallipoli  or  Asia.  Some  were  returning  to 
France,  others  going  to  Egypt,  the  majority  bound 
for  Saloniki,  for  the  army  of  the  Orient,  and  no  one 
to  tell  us  what  to  do  with  our  three  thousand  tons 
and  our  six  cases  of  airplanes.  Fourgues  went  to  see 
the  French  admiral,  then  the  English  admiral,  then 
the  commander  of  the  English  base,  then  the  com- 
mander of  the  French  base,  and  all  the  authorities. 
Everybody  said,  "The  Pamir?  The  Pamir?  Three 
thousand  tons?  Munitions  of  war?  Six  airplanes? 
What  to  do  with  you?  You  are  asking  for  orders?" 

"What  good  does  it  do,"  said  Fourgues,  "to 
have  admirals  and  commanders  of  bases  in  the  coun- 
tries where  things  are  red-hot  if  they  are  n't  capable 
of  taking  the  initiative  and  getting  the  orders  from 
Paris  for  a  poor  little  bark  of  three  thousand  tons  ?  " 
Of  course,  the  orders  hadn't  arrived.  They  have 
other  fish  to  fry  in  Paris  and  London.  We  should 
still  be  there  if  one  fine  evening  Fourgues  had  n't 
said  at  dinner:  — 

"Get  up  steam,  sonny,  and  we'll  start  at  dawn 
110 


FROM  MUDROS  TO  SALONIKI 

with  to-morrow's  convoy.  We'll  go  to  Saloniki. 
They  must  be  needing  the  stuff  there,  for  it  seems 
that  the  army  of  the  Orient  is  going  into  Bulgaria. 
After  the  Pamir  has  left  Mudros  they  can't  catch  us 
because  they  have  n't  given  us  any  wireless  and  at 
Saloniki  we  shall  see  what  we  shall  see!" 

He  was  as  good  as  his  word.  The  Pamir  set  out 
the  next  day,  getting  behind  four  big  water-bruisers 
that  were  leaving  the  barrage  and  nobody  said  a 
word.  Fourgues  was  enjoying  it  on  the  bridge. 

"You  see,  the  French  admiral  thinks  that  I  have 
orders  from  the  commander  of  the  military  base; 
the  commander  thinks  that  I  have  orders  from  the 
admiral;  between  the  two  of  them  they  would  have 
let  my  cargo  mould,  whereas  to-morrow  General 
Sarrail  will  be  very  much  pleased  to  get  it." 

Perhaps  he  was  right.  Perhaps,  though,  when 
they  saw  the  Pamir  put  out,  the  admiral  and  the 
base-commander  were  only  too  glad  to  be  rid  of  the 
old  trombone-player  and  said  to  themselves  that 
they  hoped  he  would  go  and  hang  himself  some- 
where else.  Fourgues  said  that  it  would  be  a  lesson 
to  him,  and  that  henceforth  when  the  authorities 
had  no  orders  to  give  him,  he  should  give  them  to 
himself,  because  it  was  disgusting  to  let  the  stock- 
holders make  a  thousand  or  fifteen  hundred  a  day 
without  doing  anything. 

The  Pamir  got  into  Saloniki  the  next  morning 
after  waiting  half  the  night  in  front  of  the  harbor 
defenses.  None  too  soon  the  French  admirals  have 
111 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

begun  to  put  nets  at  the  entrances  of  harbors,  in- 
stead of  leaving  them  as  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war  when  the  submarines  had  only  to  come  in.  I  tell 
you,  old  man,  the  Germans  discovered  this  before 
we  ever  thought  of  it,  and  the  Austrians,  too,  in  their 
North  Sea,  Adriatic,  and  Baltic  ports ;  and  they  will 
discover  many  other  things  in  which  we  shall  be  six 
months  or  a  year  behindhand.  The  thing  that  takes 
my  breath  away  is  that  I  chatted  with  not  a  few 
young  sailors  of  your  navy  and  they  all  see  it  clearly. 
When  I  say  young,  I  mean  fellows  between  thirty 
and  forty-five,  the  kind  the  English  have  already 
dubbed  old  fogies!  In  the  French  navy  these  old 
fogies  have  n't  the  right  to  an  opinion,  but  never- 
theless they  see.  It  can't  be  said  that  they  are  ignor- 
ant of  their  profession,  having  followed  it  for  eigh- 
teen or  twenty  years;  nor  can  it  be  said  that  they 
are  n't  capable  of  commanding,  because  in  England 
they  are  already  commanding  a  squadron  or  a  naval 
base,  and  any  day  one  can  see  an  old  French  naval 
lieutenant  of  forty-five  with  three  stripes  going  to 
ask  for  orders  of  a  young  English  admiral  of  forty- 
two  with  three  stars.  The  contrary  has  never  oc- 
curred. Does  that  mean  that  the  French  don't  hap- 
pen to  be  as  clever  as  the  English  ?  Tell  me  if  you 
agree,  or  if,  after  your  contact  with  the  navy,  you 
think  that  the  French  admirals  don't  believe  at  all 
in  rejuvenating  the  higher  grades  ?  I  should  like  to 
tell  you  all  I  think  about  it  and  what  Fourgues 
thinks  too,  but  I  see  that  my  letter  has  not  finished 

112 


AIRPLANES  WELCOME  AT  SALONIKI 

with  the  history  of  the  Pamir  and  so  I  must  wait 
for  another  time. 

It  happened  that  our  stuff  was  mighty  welcome 
at  Saloniki.  The  army  people  fell  upon  it  as  though 
we  were  saviors.  Guns,  gun-carriages,  picks  and 
shovels,  and  everything  else  the  Pamir  had  —  there 
was  none  too  much  of  all  this  in  Macedonia,  and  all 
the  vessels  receive  the  same  warm  welcome.  There 
are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  tons  to  be  moved 
from  one  point  to  another  and  nobody  dares  take 
the  initiative  because  all  war-supplies  are  under  the 
grand  quartermaster-general  of  France,  and  the 
grand  quartermaster-general  is  n't  here  and  does  n't 
give  any  orders,  but  if  any  one  on  the  spot  gives 
any  he  does  n't  like  it  and  commands  the  exact 
opposite,  and  there's  no  getting  along  with  a  system 
like  that.  So  you  can  imagine  if  they  did  n't  think 
Fourgues  was  the  real  thing  to  have  brought  his 
three  thousand  tons  without  any  one  having  to  ask 
for  them.  It  did  n't  take  long  to  unload  and  the  air- 
planes were  especially  welcome.  No  one  knew  how 
they  had  got  along  without  them.  The  six  others, 
which  the  Pamir  left  at  Marseilles,  had  been  sent 
at  once  to  the  French  front,  where  there  is  so  much 
breakage  and  where  more  airplanes  are  used  than 
in  the  army  of  the  Orient,  which  is  only  a  side-issue 
of  the  war.  But  the  six  we  brought  —  no  one  at 
Saloniki  appeared  to  know  what  had  become  of 
them,  yet  they  were  much  needed,  for  the  Fokkers 
and  the  Taubes  came  practically  every  day  and 
113 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

there  were  none  too  many  battle-planes.  That's 
what  ours  were.  We  stayed  at  Saloniki  five  days, 
and  at  the  end  of  three  those  battle-planes  had  al- 
ready gone  up  and  had  sugared  the  Bulgarians. 
Right  away  Fourgues  was  satisfied  and  he  said  to 
me:  — 

"See  here,  kid,  I  begin  to  understand  this  war. 
There  are  two  kinds  of  people:  the  scribblers,  ad- 
ministrative species,  who  have  the  authority  and  who 
let  the  poilus  be  killed  administratively  and  the 
boats  sunk  administratively.  When  the  papers  have 
all  been  made  out  and  their  responsibility  well  cov- 
ered up,  they  rub  their  hands  and  don't  give  a 
damn.  And  then  there  are  the  others:  folks  like  you 
and  me  and  some  millions  of  poor  devils.  We  drudge 
and  wear  out  our  skins  without  needing  to  make 
out  any  papers,  but  we  are  the  ones  that  keep  the 
shop  going  and  win  the  war.  No  one  thanks  us,  but 
if  France  holds  up  her  end,  it  is  because  of  us  of  the 
ships  and  the  trenches.  On  land  they  have  n't  yet 
found  out  how  to  get  heavy  artillery  like  the  Ger- 
mans, so  where  the  Boches  send  a  shell  of  large  cali- 
bre, we  send  a  poilu  and  the  blood  of  our  poilus  com- 
pensates for  the  inferiority  of  our  artillery.  At  sea 
it's  the  same  thing,  except  that  the  submarine  takes 
the  place  of  the  heavy  artillery,  and  the  ships  which 
go  to  the  bottom  take  the  place  of  the  poilus  who 
let  themselves  be  pounded.  All  that  isn't  good  to 
put  in  the  newspapers,  but  it's  the  truth  just  the 
same.  It  will  go  on  and  on,  but  in  the  end  we  shall 

114 


THE  TRUTH  NOT  WANTED 

be  obliged  to  do  as  the  Germans  do  instead  of  scof- 
fing at  them." 

Fourgues  is  generally  in  the  right,  and  the  things 
he  says  come  to  pass  six  or  eight  months  later,  so 
when  you  tell  him  he  is  a  pessimist,  he  has  only  to 
say,  "Wait  and  see!"  And  when  his  predictions  are 
realized,  the  people  who  said  they  never  would  be 
have  forgotten  what  he  told  them  in  the  first  place, 
and  they  brag  of  how  they  had  been  predicting  this 
for  a  long  time!  Then  he  gets  into  a  rage  and  an- 
nounces some  more  things  which  astonish  them  and 
they  repeat  that  it  can't  be  so  because  the  news- 
papers are  saying  quite  the  opposite.  Five  or  six 
months  later,  behold  Fourgues  again  in  the  right! 

Have  you  noticed  the  following  on  the  Auvergne? 
Once  in  a  while  one  has  a  true,  honest,  real  tip  —  as, 
for  example,  when  Fourgues  or  I  tell  things  that  we 
have  seen  with  our  eyes  and  heard  with  our  ears 
on  the  Pamir  in  Archangel,  or  Norway,  or  England, 
or  somewhere  else.  Not  jokes,  but  things  like  "two 
and  two  make  four"  and  "two  hands  have  ten 
fingers."  Well,  then,  Fourgues  and  I  spin  our  little 
yarns  when  we  are  asked  to,  as  though  it  might 
interest  people  and  as  though  they  wanted  to  know 
the  truth.  Eh  bien,  not  at  all!  The  higher  placed 
they  are,  the  less  they  want  to  know  the  truth. 
When  you  have  told  them  something  they  know  is 
true,  they  answer,  "Above  all,  do  not  repeat  this! 
We  must  not  trouble  public  opinion!"  One  would 
ask  nothing  better  than  to  keep  still,  on  condition 
115 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

that  the  people  in  high  places  do  whatever  is  neces- 
sary to  remedy  the  evils  they  say  must  be  hidden. 
But  when  you  see  that  it's  not  at  all  in  order  to 
remedy  them  in  silence  that  they  command  you  to 
hold  your  tongue,  but  only  that  they  may  sit  with 
their  arms  folded  doing  nothing  while  those  who 
are  not  informed  imagine  that  everything  is  being 
done  —  well,  old  fellow,  it's  pretty  rank! 

Or  say  that  these  same  official  people  don't  know 
that  what  you  tell  them  is  true,  —  not  officially,  that 
is.  Then  there's  no  use  trumpeting  it  into  their  ears. 
They  listen  to  nothing,  hear  nothing,  do  nothing. 
Fourgues  told  at  Mudros,  at  Saloniki,  and  at  other 
places  the  stories  Flannigan  told  him  in  Trondhjem 
about  the  kind  of  submarine  warfare  the  Germans 
were  preparing  for  us.  As  he  has  an  unholy  memory 
for  details,  he  repeated  things  from  the  German 
papers,  with  figures  and  all  particulars.  Eh  bien !  All 
the  naval  chiefs  made  fun  of  him  as  they  did  in  the 
navy  a  year  and  a  half  ago.  When  he  spoke  of  the 
Cressy,  the  Hogue,  the  Aboukir,  the  Lusitania,  the 
Bouvet,  the  Ocean,  the  Gambetta  and  all  the  others 
that  have  gone  down,  they  answered  that  it  was 
pure  accident;  that  the  Germans  couldn't  do  any- 
thing more  because  their  submarines  had  been  sunk 
—  that  all  measures  had  been  taken,  that  in  less  than 
six  weeks  the  naval  war  would  be  over,  and  that  it 
was  only  necessary  to  read  the  papers  I  Whereupon 
Fourgues,  somewhat  astonished,  pointed  to  the  pa- 
pers where  "Marine"  is  printed  with  one  or  two 

116 


ARABS  AND  SOUDANESE 

blank  columns  beneath.  But  when  he  assumes  that 
these  columns  hide  something,  he  is  told  that  he  is  a 
coward  and  a  sower  of  panic.  Then  he  gets  furious 
and  holds  his  tongue  for  fear  of  saying  too  much. 
But  he  confides  to  me  that  with  harebrains  like  that 
to  look  after  things  at  sea,  with  those  on  the 
ships  too  old  and  those  in  the  ministries  indifferent, 
we  can  expect  anything  of  the  Germans  who  don't 
travel  four  roads  at  once.  It's  lucky  for  those  who 
direct  the  English  and  French  naval  affairs  that  the 
public  understands  nothing  about  it,  otherwise  they 
would  have  their  dirty  linen  washed  in  Parliament 
as  was  done  for  the  army  and  we  should  be  taking 
precautions  instead  of  heading  for  catastrophes. 
4  But  I  am  wandering  from  the  Pamir.  When  we 
had  emptied  out  our  stuff,  the  military  authorities 
needed  to  send  a  lot  of  colonials  back  to  Algiers,  — 
Arabs  and  Soudanese  who  had  been  in  the  Orient 
almost  a  year  and  were  shaking  with  the  cold.  At 
Saloniki  there  was  none  but  the  Pamir  ready  for  the 
voyage  —  all  the  other  boats  were  waiting  to  be  un- 
loaded. So  we  took  on  three  hundred  Africans.  They 
did  n't  make  much  noise,  the  poor  fellows,  what  with 
their  shivering  and  seasickness.  They  asked  only 
one  thing  —  to  be  let  alone.  All  we  had  to  do  was  to 
give  them  bread  and  water  twice  a  day.  They  swal- 
lowed a  little  and  vomited  the  rest  of  the  time. 

From  Saloniki  to  Algiers  we  followed  the  secret 
route  indicated  by  the  French  and  English  Admiral- 
ties.  Fourgues  took  it,  not  for  security,  but  for  a  joke. 
117 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"What  will  you  bet,  my  boy?"  he  said  when  he 
had  traced  the  route  out  on  his  chart.  "Will  you 
make  a  bet  with  me?" 

"I  should  like  to  very  much,  captain,  but  about 
what?" 

"Eh  bien,  look  here!  The  Pamir  is  going  to  follow 
this  highly  secret  route  from  Saloniki  to  Algiers. 
Therefore,  the  Boches  aren't  acquainted  with  it; 
therefore,  it's  protected  against  submarines;  there- 
fore, we  are  required  to  follow  it  —  is  n't  that  so?" 

"But  I  don't  see—" 

"What  will  you  bet  that  before  we  get  in  the 
Pamir  will  either  be  torpedoed  on  this  route  —  which 
we  are  ordered  to  follow  —  or  that  we  pick  up  the 
lifeboats  of  some  boat  that  has  been  torpedoed  ?  Are 
you  on?" 

"Before  going  into  it,  I  want  to  know  why.  For, 
of  course,  it  is  n't  just  to  catch  their  prunes  that  we 
are  sent  out  on  a  safe,  secret,  and  protected  course." 

Fourgues  roared  like  a  whale.  He  wouldn't  ex- 
plain, but  he  said:  — 

"  If  I  lose,  I  '11  give  you  a  box  of  cigars.  If  I  win, 
you  stand  two  middle  watches  for  me  extra." 

"I  will,  indeed,  but  why?" 

"I'll  tell  you  afterwards." 

He  would  n't  give  in  and  there  was  no  explanation, 
but  the  old  fox  was  right!  Between  Malta  and 
Algiers  we  came  upon  the  lifeboats  of  the  Mer-Morte 
which  had  been  torpedoed  fifteen  hours  before. 

We  discovered  them  early,  at  about  half-past  six 
118 


THE  SURVIVORS  OF  THE  MER-MORTE 

in  the  morning.  I  had  the  watch.  Fourgues  said  to 
me  when  he  knocked  off  at  four:  — 

"Don't  leave  the  secret  route,  eh,  my  boy?  At 
exactly  five  o'clock,  turn  to  the  west  —  you'll  see  — ■ 
at  the  point  I  have  marked  on  the  chart  with  a  pen- 
cil. At  that  point  the  secret  routes  from  north,  south, 
east,  and  west  cross  each  other.  All  the  boats  pass 
there.  We'll  go  that  way." 

I  made  it  just  as  close  as  I  could.  There  was  a  nice 
little  breeze  from  the  east  pushing  in  our  backs  and 
rolling  us  about,  as  we  were  empty.  The  Africans 
were  vomiting  desperately  in  the  corners  and  we 
could  n't  see  a  hundred  yards. 

I  had  been  going  due  west  for  almost  an  hour  and 
a  quarter  and  had  just  lit  one  to  keep  myself  awake, 
when  the  lookout  on  the  mast  shouted:  — 

"Wreck  two  points  to  starboard!" 

I  looked  and  did  n't  see  a  thing,  but  all  the  same  I 
put  the  helm  over  and  steered  as  the  lookout  had 
said,  when  he  began  to  sing  again:  — 

"Second  wreck,  straight  ahead  of  you  at  three 
hundred  yards!" 

There  was  no  need  to  awaken  Fourgues.  He 
leaped  from  his  cabin  to  the  bridge  with  his  field- 
glass  and  made  out  two  lifeboats  before  you  could 
wink. 

"That's  all  right,  my  boy!  There  are  two  boats, 

quite  full.    We'll  get  them.    I  take  the  watch  and 

you  go  back  to  pick  the  poor  fellows  up.  Have  wine 

and  coffee  and  blankets  heated.   They  must  have 

119 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

been  there  ever  since  last  night  and  are  probably 
soaked  with  this  chop  a  yard  high." 

Fourgues  manoeuvred  nicely,  and  in  five  minutes 
we  got  the  men  aboard,  although  the  two  lifeboats 
had  drifted  five  hundred  yards  apart.  He  came  along- 
side so  well  in  the  wind  that  they  were  in  quiet  water, 
and  as  there  were  only  sailors  and  not  an  elephant 
in  the  lot,  they  climbed  our  ladder  without  having 
to  be  asked.  They  were  rather  moist.  I  sent  them 
to  dry  in  the  boiler-room,  and  after  they  had  drunk 
their  coffee  and  hot  wine  they  snored  the  entire  day 
and  were  as  fresh  as  could  be  by  night. 

There  was  only  one  officer,  the  engineer  Villiers  of 
whom  I  have  already  spoken.  We  put  him  to  bed 
at  once  in  Muriac's  cabin  and  were  a  little  worried 
about  him  as  he  was  delirious  all  the  way  to  Algiers. 
A  shell  had  burst  in  the  engines  of  the  Mer-Morte, 
smashing  a  cylinder  and  killing  two  men,  and  he 
does  n't  yet  know  how  he  ever  came  out  of  it.  Since 
day  before  yesterday  he  has  been  getting  better,  and 
here  is  the  story  he  told  us:  — 

The  Mer-Morte  left  Toulon  with  a  cargo  of  shells, 
gun  cartridges,  explosives,  and  all  the  outfit  for  the 
army  of  the  Orient.  As  usual,  no  wireless,  no  guns, 
nothing — just  like  ourselves.  She  took  the  secret 
route  from  Toulon  to  Saloniki,  the  same  as  the  Pamir, 
only  in  the  opposite  direction.  They  were  told  that 
the  route  was  guarded  from  one  end  to  the  other. 
"That  story  is  all  right  for  civilians!"  said  Villiers. 
"It  would  take  at  least  a  thousand  boats  to  guard 

120 


THE  MER-MORTE'S  STORY 

the  route  from  Toulon  to  Saloniki  and  there  are  n't 
a  hundred  on  the  whole  Mediterranean."  I  ought  to 
add  that  the  Mer-Morte  has  been  knocking  about 
almost  as  much  as  the  Pamir  since  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  particularly  in  the  Mediterranean,  and 
that  Villiers  thinks  about  things  much  the  same 
as  Fourgues  and  I,  and  says  that  his  captain,  who 
went  down  with  the  ship,  poor  fellow,  was  of  a  sim- 
ilar mind.  All  the  same  it's  a  joke  that  the  people 
who  do  the  real  work  of  the  sea  think  alike  on  the 
subject  of  the  German  submarine  and  say  it  is  n't 
a  bluff,  while  the  land-lubbers  and  the  papers  and 
the  ministers  all  say  not  to  make  too  much  of  it  be- 
cause it's  going  to  be  over  in  two  weeks.  Which  two 
weeks?  Villiers  thinks  it  is  pretty  bad,  having  just 
been  through  it,  and  although  he  is  only  an  engineer 
and  not  a  navigating  officer,  he  said  things  which 
Fourgues  considered  quite  just. 

To  return  to  Villier's  story.  The  Mer-Morte,  with 
her  five  thousand  tons  of  projectiles  and  other  muni- 
tions, followed  the  secret  route  to  the  spot  where  they 
were  to  head  east  for  the  Malta  channel.  She  had 
not  met  a  single  patrol  or  guard.  This  was  no  sur- 
prise to  Villiers,  for  he  knows  that  patrolling  is  im- 
possible. He  asked  us  if  the  Pamir  had  met  any 
patrols  from  Saloniki  to  Algiers,  and  Fourgues 
showed  him  the  whites  of  his  eyes,  which  was  a  good 
answer  I  Nor  did  it  surprise  Villiers  either.  He  told 
us  all  this  in  port,  and  you  know  that  when  a  fellow 
has  just  escaped  death,  has  lost  his  captain,  his  first 
121 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

officer,  ten  men,  his  ship,  five  thousand  tons  of  shells, 
and  barely  missed  going  with  them,  in  spite  of  your- 
self you  listen  to  what  he  says  a  little  more  than  to 
the  assininities  of  the  land-lubbers. 

So  the  Mer-Morte  came  that  evening  to  the  turn- 
ing-point in  the  route.  There,  a  submarine  emerged 
five  or  six  hundred  yards  behind  her  and  fired  a 
blank  shot  to  stop  her.  The  commander  of  the  Mer- 
Morte  was  a  fellow  who  was  n't  afraid  of  anything. 
As  he  had  five  thousand  tons  of  munitions  on  board, 
he  thought  he  ought  not  to  let  himself  be  sunk  be- 
cause they  were  needed  by  the  army  of  the  Orient; 
so  he  sent  an  order  to  Villiers  in  the  engine-room  to 
fire  up  for  all  he  was  worth  and  keep  her  at  top  speed 
for  half  an  hour,  when,  as  night  was  falling,  he  would 
be  able  to  lose  the  submarine.  Villiers  did  all  he 
could  and  the  Mer-Morte  got  up  to  eleven  knots 
and  a  half.  But  the  submarine  was  faster  than  that 
and  gained  on  the  Mer-Morte  and  sent  some  shots 
into  her.  She  was  no  more  armed  than  the  Pamir 
and  could  n't  reply.  The  commander,  seeing  that  he 
would  be  sunk,  thought  he  would  try  to  sink  the 
submarine,  so  he  came  about  and  headed  for  it.  You 
know  what  that  was  like  —  like  a  foot  soldier  against 
a  machine  gun.  The  submarine  waited  a  little,  then 
sent  two  shells  onto  the  bridge,  killing  the  com- 
mander, his  first  officer  and  the  others,  and  two  more 
right  into  her  hull  near  the  water-line,  which  shat- 
tered the  engine  and  boilers,  but  missed  Villiers. 

So  the  Mer-Morte  had  to  stop  —  no  captain,  no 
122 


A  POLITE  SUBMARINE  OFFICER 

steam  —  a  wreck.  The  submarine  stood  near  and 
sent  an  officer  out  in  a  youyou,  who  came  aboard  her. 
Villiers  went  up  to  the  deck  with  all  the  crew  who  had 
not  been  killed.  He  was  not  yet  delirious.  The  sub- 
marine officer  knew  French  well  and  was  very  polite. 

"You  are  to  launch  your  lifeboats  and  take  the 
crew  in  them.  You,  officer,  will  please  accompany 
me  to  the  bridge.  Oh,  we  saw!  We  killed  the  com- 
mander and  an  officer  of  the  watch.  Our  gunner  is 
very  good.  But  there's  something  on  the  bridge  that 
I  must  see." 

Villiers  followed  him.  The  officer  was  accompanied 
by  two  sailors  armed  with  revolvers  and  the  sub- 
marine stood  close  by  with  her  gun  leveled.  He  went 
to  the  navigation-room  and  looked  at  the  chart  of 
the  Mediterranean,  upon  which  the  commander  of 
the  Mer-Morte  had  traced  the  secret  route  from 
Toulon  to  Saloniki.  He  compared  this  with  a  chart 
which  he  had  brought  with  him  from  the  submarine. 
When  he  saw  that  they  matched,  he  said  to  Villiers: — 

"That's  all  right.  We  know  where  all  the  boats 
go;  our  spies  have  not  misinformed  us.  With  secret 
routes  like  this  we  are  sure  of  not  losing  time  because 
you  all  go  the  same  way.  The  patrol  boats  are  not 
very  numerous,  as  you  may  have  noticed;  when 
there  are  any  we  stay  out  of  range  and  come  up  again 
when  they  are  gone.  That  simplifies  our  job." 

Villiers  was  astounded,  but  the  other  was  very 
polite  and  smiled. 

"Oh,  it  wasn't  by  chance!  Our  submarine  was 
123 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

waiting  for  the  Mer-Morte,  which  left  Toulon  day 
before  yesterday  evening  with  five  thousand  tons  of 
munitions  for  the  army  of  the  Orient.  The  same  day 
the  Saint-Artemise  left  with  coal  for  Bizerta,  the 
Jeanne-Marguerite  with  coal  for  Navarin,  and  the 
battleship  Lyon  for  Malta.  They  all  passed  this  way 
during  the  day.  We  saw  them  and  let  them  go.  We 
don't  work  except  when  there's  no  risk  and  when 
it's  worth  while.  Five  thousand  tons  of  munitions! 
We  are  very  well  informed,  and  then  with  these 
secret  routes  it  is  so  much  more  convenient!" 

When  he  had  finished  carefully  consulting  the 
charts  of  the  Mer-Morte,  the  Boche  handed  Villiers 
a  memorandum-book  with  stubs  and  asked  him  to 
sign  it:  — 

"It's  for  our  accounts  and  our  part  of  the  prize- 
money,"  he  said.  "Of  course,  we  should  be  believed 
if  we  said  we  had  sunk  a  vessel,  but  it  is  better  to 
have  the  signature  of  one  of  the  officers.  It's  more 
certain.  In  Germany,  it's  not  the  same  as  it  is  with 
you.  The  more  we  destroy  at  sea,  the  more  they  pay 
us.  We  are  making  real  war.  So  this  little  affair  of 
the  Mer-Morte,  with  her  five  thousand  tons  of  muni- 
tions, is  worth  ten  thousand  marks  to  my  commander, 
five  thousand  to  me,  and  a  thousand  to  each  of  the 
men  of  the  crew  of  my  submarine.  It 's  nice,  is  n't  it  ? 
Ah!  I  recommend  that  you  get  into  your  lifeboats 
at  once  and  row  hard.  I  'm  going  to  put  grenades  in 
the  forward  hold,  and  dame,  within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  there  will  be  some  fine  fireworks!" 

124 


A  POLITE  SUBMARINE  OFFICER 

Villiers  said  to  him  that  at  least  he  would  permit 
the  sailors  to  take  some  provisions  and  wine  and 
clothing,  as  the  lifeboats  might  be  long  at  sea. 

"What's  the  use  of  that?  We  are  not  savages," 
answered  the  Boche;  "all  the  boats  pass  this  way. 
There  are  some  carrying  nothing  of  importance  pass- 
ing within  twenty-four  hours  —  the  Creuse,  the  City 
of  Birmingham,  the  Pamir,  the  Santa  Trinita.  We 
shan't  do  anything  to  them  —  there  are  others  more 
interesting.  We  are  well  informed!  Among  those 
four  there  will  surely  be  one  to  pick  you  up!" 

Villiers  got  off  in  the  lifeboat  and  they  rowed  as 
hard  as  they  could  against  the  wind.  The  Mer-Morte 
blew  up  twenty  minutes  later.  He  had  time  to  take 
along  all  the  fellows  that  had  been  killed  and  we 
buried  them  in  Algiers.  But  he  had  held  up  under 
the  blow  as  long  as  he  could.  Toward  midnight  the 
cold,  the  wet,  thirst,  and  all  that  he  had  been  through 
made  him  delirious,  and  when  we  arrived  he  had  to 
have  a  rope  under  his  arms  and  be  hoisted  into  the 
Pamir  —  he  was  in  shreds. 

He  is  almost  well  now.  We  reached  Algiers  day 
before  yesterday  and  set  on  shore  the  Arabs  of  the 
Army  of  the  Orient,  who  will  tell  this  story  in  their 
huts.  Fourgues  and  I  are  going  with  Villiers  to- 
morrow to  see  the  military  authorities  and  leave  a 
written  report  and  make  a  verbal  one  of  the  affair  of 
the  Pamir  and  the  Mer-Morte.  I  will  write  you  later. 
The  mailboat  for  France  leaves  soon  and  we  don't 
know  what  the  Pamir  is  going  to  do.  Good-bye,  old 
125 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

man.   I  hope  Villiers  is  going  to  stay  on  the  Pamir. 
Then  I  can  write  you  more  often. 

Saloniki,  March  i3,  1916 

Dear  Old  Man,  — 

You  never  can  guess  what  the  Pamir  trundled 
up  here?  Firewood,  just  plain  firewood!  To  be  sure, 
there  are  lots  of  other  things  on  top,  but  it's  mostly 
firewood.  It  appears  that  this  commodity  is  scarce 
in  France  and  every  other  country,  and  as  in  the 
army  of  the  Orient  they  had  about  as  much  as  I  have 
in  the  middle  of  my  eye,  we  brought  two  thousand 
tons.  But  I  am  anticipating.  Let  us  return  to  Algiers 
where  I  left  you  after  we  had  picked  up  the  castaways 
of  the  Mer-Morte. 

The  authorities  of  the  port  received  us  coolly 
enough.  Villiers,  Fourgues,  and  I  told  our  little  story 
and  handed  in  our  written  statements  for  the  Navy 
Department.  It  was  all  as  clear  as  daylight,  but  still 
they  looked  rather  black.  They  asked  Villiers  a  lot 
of  questions  about  the  route,  the  manoeuvre,  the 
hour  when  the  submarine  arrived,  where  the  of- 
ficer came  on  board,  where  the  Mer-Morte  went 
down  —  how  can  I  remember  them  all!  Do  you 
see  it?  Villiers  was  in  the  engine-room  watching 
over  his  boilers  and  pistons.  He  answered  that  he 
did  n't  know  what  took  place  during  that  time  and 
that  he  had  put  in  his  written  report  all  that  he 
knew  of  the  affair.  He  said  that  he  was  the  engineer 
and  not  an  officer  of  the  bridge.   But  they  did  n't 

126 


SECRET  ROUTES  AND  THE  PATROL 

like  it.  As  I  understood  the  thing,  the  Mer-Morte 
ought  not  to  have  been  torpedoed  just  at  that  spot. 
No  matter  where  else  and  nothing  would  have  been 
said,  but  there  —  no! 

I  had  an  explanation  of  this  the  day  after,  knock- 
ing around  on  shore  with  a  little  midshipman  in  the 
quartermaster's  department,  who  had  some  inside 
information.  He  told  me  that  the  place  where  the 
Mer-Morte  was  sunk  is  just  at  the  boundary  of  the 
commands  of  two  admirals.  So,  you  see,  as  there 
is  some  sort  of  a  quarrel  between  them,  the  patrol 
boats  of  one  don't  go  into  the  domain  of  the  other, 
and  vice  versa.  If  a  patrol-boat  thinks  there  is  some- 
thing to  chase  and  chases  it  into  the  other  zone, 
both  admirals  get  after  it  and,  so,  of  course,  nobody 
goes  outside  his  own  zone  any  more.  The  admirals 
have  their  boats  close  at  hand  and  good  transports 
are  torpedoed. 

Well,  Fourgues,  who  is  n't  an  engineer,  but  who 
knows  all  about  things  on  the  bridge,  made  an  aw- 
ful row.  He  said  that  with  a  system  of  secret  routes 
which  the  Germans  learn  in  twenty-four  hours,  we 
might  just  as  well  give  up,  and  that  if  they  were 
determined  at  any  price  to  have  a  particular  route 
for  transports,  they  should  at  least  indicate  a  dif- 
ferent one  for  each.  As  the  submarines  can't  be 
everywhere  at  once,  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to 
have  the  cargo-boats  widely  scattered,  for  having 
only  one  route  for  all  of  them  is  the  way  to  get  the 
greatest  number  sunk.  They  told  him  to  shut  up, 
127 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

saying  that  as  this  particular  secret  route  had  been 
discovered,  the  naval  authorities  would  find  a  new 
one,  and  as  it  was  the  best  method  ascertained  by 
competent  persons,  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do 
but  conform. 

Then  Fourgues  said  that  wireless  could  hurt  no 
one,  cost  almost  nothing  to  install,  and  would  at 
least  permit  those  ships  whose  dynamos  were  not 
stopped  by  the  first  shot  of  shell  or  torpedo  to  call 
for  help.  They  answered  that  all  these  questions 
were  being  studied,  but  it  was  not  as  simple  as  he 
seemed  to  think.  After  that,  he  asked  to  be  given 
guns,  one  forward  and  one  aft,  so  that  if  the  Pamir 
were  attacked  by  a  submarine,  our  only  recourse 
would  not  be  to  say  our  prayers  and  add  Amen. 
That  was  where  he  got  caught,  and  in  first-rate 
fashion!  For  they  retorted  that  if  he  didn't  wish 
to  navigate  any  more,  he  had  only  to  say  so;  for 
they  had  other  things  to  do  besides  putting  guns  on 
old  barks  like  the  Pamir  and  that  the  authorities 
were  giving  these  problems  an  attention  which  did 
not  need  to  be  solicited  by  captains  of  the  merchant 
marine. 

I  wish  you  could  have  seen  Fourgues'  face  during 
this  call-down.  He  went  from  white  to  brick-red. 

"It's  the  same  old  story!"  was  what  he  said  as 
we  came  out.  "All  the  land-lubbers  think  we  are 
afraid.  Eh!  What  do  I  care  about  losing  my  car- 
cass! But  when  the  Pamir  goes  down,  it  will  make 
three  thousand  tons  the  less.    And  not  by  putting 

128 


HEROES 

blank  spaces  in  the  newspapers  can  they  rebuild 
those  three  thousand  tons!" 

As  for  me,  I  am  beginning  to  believe  that  as  far 
as  the  wireless  and  guns  are  concerned,  Fourgues  is 
more  than  right.  But  there  has  been  no  time  to  re- 
flect on  all  this  because  the  local  press  and  the  civil 
authorities  have  made  the  greatest  imaginable  fuss 
over  the  affair  of  the  Mer-Morte  and  the  Pamir. 
Old  man,  I've  had  my  biography  in  the  papers  of 
the  burg  and  you'd  never  believe  what  a  wonderful 
chap  I  am!  They  interviewed  me  after  Fourgues 
and  Villiers,  and  hurrah  for  the  heroism  of  our  sailors, 
the  mastery  of  the  sea,  German  submarine  bluff,  and 
the  efficacious  protection  exercised  by  the  Allied 
Admiralties  over  our  fleets!  Of  course,  we  oughtn't 
to  say  so,  but  when  they  want  to  knock  the  pub- 
lic speechless,  the  censor  throws  all  the  gates  wide 
open.  In  brief,  they  invited  all  three  of  us  to  a  mu- 
nicipal banquet.  The  chief  naval  officer  came  with 
an  aide-de-camp,  and  all  the  cream  of  society  were 
there.  We  were  given  a  grand  spread.  When  they 
came  to  the  toasts,  the  mayor,  the  captain  of  the 
port,  and  the  president  of  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce got  off  a  lot  of  hot  air  they  had  found  in  the 
morning  papers.  They  know  almost  as  much  about 
the  sea  as  I  know  about  painting  in  oil. 

But  the  climax  came  with  the  chief  naval  vege- 
table who  spoke  next  to  the  last.  During  the  after- 
noon he  had  treated  Fourgues  as  though  he  were  a 
cabin-boy  and  had  refused  to  transmit  any  of  the 
129 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

requests  Fourgues  made.  The  same  evening  when 
the  champagne  came  on,  he  poured  a  ton  of  vaseline 
on  his  head. 

"I  lift  my  glass,"  he  said,  "in  honor  of  valiant 
Captain  Fourgues,  whose  presence  of  mind  and  whose 
nautical  science  have  once  more  proved  to  the  Ger- 
mans how  vain  are  their  pretended  insults  to  the 
naval  supremacy  of  the  Allies!  An  accident  is  in 
no  sense  a  defeat.  I  will  state  officially  that  precau- 
tions have  been  taken.  Captain  Fourgues  will  not 
again  encounter  a  Mer-Morte!" 

I  was  struck  dumb.  Fourgues  replied.  You  know 
that  when  he  wants  to  he  can  speak  better  than  I 
can  spit.  His  beard  was  moving  and  he  was  creas- 
ing the  tablecloth  with  his  finger-nails.  I  wondered 
what  on  earth  he  was  going  to  serve  up  to  the  as- 
sembly, but  I  need  n't  have  been  anxious. 

"Thank  you,"  he  said.  "I  am  a  sailor,  and  do 
not  speak  well  except  on  board  my  ship.  Thank 
you!" 

And  then  he  would  sit  down  in  spite  of  all  they 
could  do.  Well,  old  man,  it's  not  so  bad  to  be  an 
orator,  for  they  applauded  to  raise  the  roof,  the  big 
bug  most  of  all.  After  this  flourish  the  meeting 
broke  up. 

The  inhabitants  had  prepared  a  vocal  and  instru- 
mental concert  with  the  assistance  of  local  artists, 
and  I  lit  a  cigar  while  they  made  me  repeat  for  the 
fiftieth  time  the  adventure  of  the  Pamir  and  the 
Mer-Morte.    Believe  me,  the  newspapers  are  not 

130 


FOURGUES  EXPLODES 

sufficient  for  the  colonists  in  this  country,  but  one 
must  be  polite  and  I  was  doing  my  level  best,  all 
the  time  leering  at  Fourgues,  who  chatted  in  a  cor- 
ner with  the  aide-de-camp  of  the  naval  chief,  who 
was  tapping  him  on  the  shoulder  as  though  he  were 
giving  him  some  more  hot  air.  But  I  could  see  that 
Fourgues  was  finding  it  pretty  raw.  He  chewed 
the  end  of  his  cigar  without  having  lit  it  and  kept 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  which  is  a  trick  he  has  to 
keep  himself  from  making  too  many  gestures  when 
he  is  mad.  When  the  aide-de-camp  left  him,  he 
came  straight  over  to  me  and  said:  — 

"Let's  get  out  of  this,  or  I  shall  explode!" 

I  should  have  preferred  to  stay,  because  all  the 
same  it's  flattering  to  be  treated  like  a  hero;  but 
Fourgues  pulled  me  by  the  sleeve  and  we  turned  our 
backs  on  high  society. 

On  the  way  back  to  the  Pamir,  he  ruminated  a 
long  time,  stopped  once,  then  went  on  again.  I  fol- 
lowed and  said  not  a  word.  Finally  he  let  it  all  out :  — 

"Do  you  know  what  he  told  me,  that  species  of 
fool  there,  with  the  epaulettes?  He  said  that  as  I 
had  no  confidence  in  the  patrolling  of  the  sea  and 
was  afraid  of  submarines,  they  were  going  to  load 
the  Pamir  with  firewood  for  the  Army  of  the  Orient. 
In  that  way,  he  said,  if  a  submarine  rakes  you  or 
torpedoes  you,  —  which  is  improbable,  —  you  will 
float,  my  dear  Fourgues,  —  you  will  float  —  be- 
cause wood  is  lighter  than  water!  Because  wood  is 
lighter  than  water,  because  wood  is  — " 
131 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

I  believe  Fourgues  repeated  it  fifty-one  times,  his 
arms  folded,  his  nose  in  the  air,  he  was  so  furious. 

Once  on  board,  he  offered  me  a  glass  of  old  marc 
from  his  home  to  make  up  for  the  liqueurs  he  had 
made  me  miss,  and  a  cigar,  a  Havana  "secundo," 
which  was  not  bad  at  all.  And  then  he  did  n't  open 
his  mouth  again,  but  started  laying  the  cards  to  see 
if  the  Pamir  would  be  sunk  or  not  before  the  end 
of  the  year.  All  his  attempts  failed  and  he  was  n't 
satisfied  at  all.  Finally  he  counted  the  cards  and 
saw  that  one  was  missing,  the  nine  of  clubs,  which 
he  found  in  the  card-box.  So  he  threw  them  all  into 
the  air  and  sent  me  to  bed. 

"Only,  my  boy,"  he  said,  "as  they  are  giving  us 
two  thousand  cubic  metres  of  wood  to  carry  to  keep 
us  from  sinking,  do  me  the  favor  of  pinching  a  few 
feet.  We  '11  make  some  rafts.  If  they  won't  give  me 
wireless  or  guns,  it's  all  right.  I  can't  buy  them 
in  a  bazaar,  but  if  a  submarine  sends  a  torpedo 
into  our  shins,  I  don't  intend  that  we  shall  all  go  to 
feed  the  crabs.  Do  you  understand?" 

I  answered  that  I  understood,  and  went  into  our 
quarters  where  Villiers  had  just  arrived  from  the 
party.  He  was  somewhat  the  worse  for  wear  as 
everybody  had  wanted  to  drink  with  him,  but  at 
bottom  he's  a  good  fellow,  for  he  is  staying  on  board 
the  Pamir  and  I  shan't  have  to  occupy  myself  with 
the  engine  any  more.  If  he  had  wanted,  the  office 
would  have  given  him  a  little  vacation  after  the 
accident,  but  he  said  that  when  one  had  had  an 

132 


V 
VILLIERS'  EFFICIENCY 

escape  like  that,  there  was  n't  anything  to  be  afraid 
of  and  that  he  would  be  a  mascot  for  the  Pamir. 
The  office  paid  all  his  losses  promptly,  —  which 
rather  astonished  me,  —  but  did  n't  increase  his  pay 
a  cent. 

Villiers  has  had  more  technical  training  than  Mu- 
riac,  who  began  at  sixteen  as  a  stoker  on  a  coast- 
vessel  and  knew  his  engine  as  he  knows  his  own 
pocket,  without  having  a  word  of  theory.  Villiers 
went  through  the  school  of  the  Arts  et  Metiers  and 
bores  us  at  table  with  tales  of  the  cycles  of  Carnot, 
eutropia,  and  the  thermodynamic  function.  Some 
days  Fourgues  looks  askance  at  him,  not  liking  to 
have  people  on  the  boat  who  know  more  than  he, 
on  no  matter  what  subject.  But  he  can't  say  any- 
thing. Villiers,  in  spite  of  his  somewhat  affected 
manner,  makes  his  whole  shop  go  as  it  should.  He 
told  me  that  he  arrived  just  in  time;  otherwise  the 
steam  steering-gear,  the  condenser,  and  the  boiler 
would  have  been  out  of  business.  I  can  well  believe 
it.  As  long  as  the  machinery  keeps  going,  I  am  able 
to  boss  the  job.  But  if  it  begins  to  say  no,  I  am  cer- 
tainly not  the  one  to  contradict  it. 

At  Algiers  we  loaded  two  thousand  steres  of  fire- 
wood. It  is  easy  to  stow  —  throw  it  in  the  hold  and 
it  arranges  itself.  It  doesn't  dirty  anything;  you 
can  be  sure  it  won't  break.  Fourgues  himself  found 
that  on  the  whole  it  was  as  good  as  coal.  It  was  to 
warm  the  poilus  of  the  army  of  the  Orient  and  we 
were  all  ready  to  start,  but  at  the  last  moment  they 
133 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

told  us  to  go  and  complete  our  cargo  in  France  and 
ordered  us  to  Cette.  Fourgues  tried  to  say  that  we 
would  n't  be  able  to  take  much,  and  that  the  Pamir 
would  lose  eight  days,  during  which  the  soldiers 
would  be  blowing  on  their  fingers  at  Saloniki.  But 
already  he  was  not  in  any  too  good  favor  with  the 
naval  authorities,  with  his  talk  of  guns,  wireless, 
and  so  on,  so  they  told  him  they  had  seen  enough  of 
him  and  to  go  to  Cette  without  making  any  more 
trouble. 

At  Cette  the  fellows  pulled  long  faces  when  they 
saw  that  we  were  only  three  quarters  full.  They 
gave  us  casks  of  wine  on  top  of  our  firewood.  It  took 
a  day  to  level  the  logs  and  twisted  pieces.  We  were 
able  to  load  two  tiers  in  each  hold,  enough  to  keep 
the  army  of  the  Orient  drunk  for  three  days,  and 
we  got  through  without  too  much  breakage  —  only 
three  or  four  old  casks  which  stove  in  while  they 
were  in  the  sling,  and  believe  me,  the  crew  howled 
when  they  saw  that  good  wine  going  into  the  water 
for  the  benefit  of  the  fish!  Just  as  we  were  on  the 
point  of  sailing,  there  arrived  from  Cette  a  corps  of 
army  mules  which  had  come  from  the  Pyrenees  for 
the  soldiers  in  the  Orient.  They  were  to  have  em- 
barked on  a  boat  especially  arranged  for  them  — 
only,  the  boat  had  been  sunk  two  days  before  and 
there  was  the  greatest  confusion  because  General 
Sarrail  was  crying  for  mules  at  the  top  of  his  voice. 
At  the  very  moment  we  were  lifting  anchor,  a  fellow 
from  the  port  ran  back,  waving  his  arms  to  tell  us 

134 


FOURGUES  AND  THE  MULES 

to  stop.  Fourgues  had  the  ladder  let  down  and  the 
chap  came  on  board  and  asked  how  many  mules 
we  could  take.  Old  man,  it  was  worth  the  price  of 
a  seat  to  see  Fourgues'  face. 

"Mules,  sir,  mules!  So  the  Pamir  is  a  stable  now, 
is  she?  I  am  full  enough  to  vomit,  sir!  I  have  big 
logs  and  little  logs  and  kindling.  And  I  have  two 
hundred  casks  of  wine,  and  at  the  rate  at  which 
things  are  moving,  it  will  be  vinegar  before  I  arrive. 
And  I  have  a  positive  order  to  get  under  way  for 
Saloniki  at  four  o'clock,  sir,  and  now  you  want  to 
know  how  many  mules  I  can  take!  Oh,  as  many  as 
you  wish,  sir!  Put  them  on  the  deck  —  in  the  smoke- 
stacks—  down  in  the  chain-well  —  up  the  masts, 
and  in  my  cabin.  Cut  them  in  pieces  and  stow  them 
in  the  hold  and  we  will  paste  them  together  again 
at  Saloniki.  It's  all  the  same  to  me!  The  sea  is  deep 
and  we  shan't  touch  bottom  even  if  you  load  us  with 
mules  enough  to  founder  us.  We  can  pack  your 
mules,  sir, in  tiers;  and  if  they  can  eat  coal  or  fire- 
wood, perhaps  they  won't  be  so  slow  when  they  get 
to  Saloniki!" 

I  wish  you  might  have  seen  the  embarrassment 
of  the  citizen  with  the  mules!  He  would  have  crawled 
into  the  compass  if  that  had  been  possible.  He 
stammered  excuses  —  haste,  extreme  haste,  pre- 
vious ship  sunk,  necessity  of  national  defense,  im- 
perative order  not  to  come  back  to  land  until  he 
had  disposed  of  his  mules  on  the  Pamir.  .  .  .  When 
Fourgues  saw  that  he  had  abused  him  sufficiently, 
135 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

he  suspended  the  order  to  get  under  way.  At  bottom 
he  was  enjoying  it. 

"I  '11  take  a  hundred  of  your  mules,  sir;  if  you  will 
bring  enough  hay  for  a  week,  for  I'm  not  going  to 
feed  them  on  the  bread  of  my  crew.  I  will  give  them 
water  from  the  boilers.  That  will  cure  those  that  are 
constipated.  Only  hurry  up!  I  don't  want  to  mould 
at  Cette  and  I  intend  to  sail  to-morrow  at  five  o'clock. 
But  do  your  mules  know  how  to  swim,  sir?  Because, 
if  the  Pamir  is  torpedoed  there's  no  place  for  them 
in  my  two  lifeboats.  And  if  they  are  seasick,  I  've  no 
orderlies  to  hold  basins  for  them! ..." 

The  fellow  rushed  off  as  soon  as  he  could,  and 
I  am  sure  he  is  still  asking  himself  what  strange 
phenomenon  it  was  he  stumbled  upon.  Villiers,  who 
came  up  from  the  engine  after  Fourgues  gave  the 
order  not  to  get  under  way,  heard  the  last  shot.  But 
as  soon  as  the  muleteer  had  turned  his  back,  Fourgues 
burst  out  laughing  and  offered  each  of  us  an  Algerian 
cigar. 

"That's  how  we  are  on  the  Pamir,  Villiers!  Of 
course,  I  '11  take  their  mules,  as  many  as  there  is  room 
for  on  the  deck.  They  are  needed  at  Saloniki.  But 
all  the  same,  they're  a  little  too  fresh  —  sending  us 
that  bird  at  the  last  moment!  As  for  you,  my  boy, 
to-night  you  are  going  to  have  a  wooden  floor  laid 
over  the  deck  for  all  these  quadrupeds.  I  don't 
intend  they  shall  hurt  their  feet  on  the  steel  deck. 
Have  it  ready  by  to-morrow  morning  at  six." 

You  see  how  Fourgues  is.  He  stayed  up  all  night 
136 


LOADING  THE  MULES 

while  the  crew  nailed  those  old  planks  that  were  left 
from  our  Moroccan  Boches.  At  six  o'clock  every- 
thing was  ready.  We  had  made  a  fine  floor  with 
cross-beams  underneath  and  with  mangers  along  the 
railing.  No  one  slept.  Villiers  was  all  right.  He  cal- 
culated the  length  of  the  boards  at  once,  the  number 
of  nails,  the  dimensions  of  the  surface  —  everything. 
Without  him  we  might  have  wasted.  If  only  we  could 
have  slept  the  next  day!  But  the  mules  arrived  with 
their  hay  at  dawn  and  we  went  right  on  without 
stopping.  Fourgues  gave  orders  to  serve  wine  ad 
libitum,  for,  he  said,  with  a  little  wine  you  can  make 
a  Frenchman  climb  up  to  Paradise  on  a  knotted  rope. 
Well,  old  man,  in  former  times  I  have  shipped 
horses,  cattle,  pigs,  and  asses  on  the  Pamir,  but  I 
recommend  mules  if  you  want  distraction.  They 
have  only  four  feet,  but  it  seems  as  though  they  had 
twenty-five.  When  you  put  the  girths  around  their 
bellies,  they  begin  to  sniff  and  fling  themselves  about. 
When  you  start  the  winches  and  they  are  hoisted 
into  the  air,  they  are  so  astounded  that  they  don't 
say  a  word;  they  content  themselves  by  dropping  all 
their  dung  because  of  the  pressure,  but  you  can  see 
by  their  sly  expression  and  their  panting  breath  that 
they  are  reserving  themselves  for  later.  And  when 
they  reach  the  deck  and  the  girth  no  longer  holds 
them,  they  begin  to  dance,  to  run,  and  to  kick  wher- 
ever they  see  a  human  face,  and  then  it's  far  from 
funny.  We  just  missed  having  our  eyes  put  out  a 
hundred  times,  because  there  were  a  hundred  mules. 
137 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

One  kicked  himself  overboard.  He  knew  how  to  swim 
and  decamped  onto  land,  and  whatever  may  have 
been  his  adventures,  the  Pamir  did  not  carry  him 
along  to  Saloniki. 

The  hay  came  too.  Fourgues  had  it  put  on  top  of 
the  deck-house  near  the  smokestack.  It  was  as  hard 
as  wood  and  as  dry  as  asbestos.  We  had  to  wet  it 
before  the  mules  could  eat  it.  Two  men  from  the 
crew  were  assigned  to  look  after  them,  because  there 
was  no  one  appointed  at  Cette  to  escort  them.  I 
was  glad  it  was  the  crew  instead  of  me!  For  twenty- 
four  hours  they  were  unable  to  approach  those  mules 
without  their  showing  their  heels  and  skipping  like 
kids,  so  that  the  two  reservists  fled  with  the  hay! 
But  when  the  beasts  began  to  get  hungry,  they  all 
held  out  their  noses  for  the  hay  when  it  came,  and 
after  a  few  days  the  movie-man  and  the  croupier 
were  chums  with  them.  As  none  of  the  rest  of  the 
crew,  Villiers  and  I  included,  could  approach  without 
seeing  them  wriggle  behind,  the  movie-man  and  the 
croupier  made  much  of  it  and  said  that  they  were 
the  only  ones  who  knew  how  to  treat  animals. 

Fourgues,  coming  down  from  the  bridge  one  night, 
wanted  to  approach  them  from  starboard  aft,  saying 
pretty  things  in  the  language  of  the  Midi:  — 

"There,  there,  my  little  dear,  mon  petit  bichon  — " 

That  did  n't  go  at  all.  Three  of  them  sent  their 
heels  about  two  inches  from  his  pipe  and  Fourgues 
stampeded  faster  than  he  would  have  thought  he 
could.   You  can't  imagine  the  noise  that  a  hundred 

138 


PLENTY  OF  AMUSEMENT 

mules  can  make  on  a  steel  deck,  even  with  a  wooden 
floor.  There  you  have  four  hundred  hoofs  making  the 
devil's  own  fireworks  all  night  long  and  there's  no 
way  of  getting  to  sleep.  Things  had  gone  pretty  well 
as  far  as  Sardinia,  because  we  had  calm  weather  with 
only  a  little  breeze;  but  from  Malta  to  Matapan  we 
scooped  up  a  wind  from  the  northwest  with  a  choppy 
swell  in  consequence.  The  hundred  mules  swung  all 
together  as  we  rolled  and  tossed  and  their  stamping 
drowned  the  noise  of  the  wind.  They  brayed  for  all 
they  were  worth.  The  spray  stung  their  eyes  and  got 
in  their  noses  and  they  sneezed  like  lost  souls.  Add 
to  this  the  five  hundred  casks,  loose  in  the  hold, 
which  went  "baloom!  baloom!"  on  top  of  the  wood 
and  you  can  see  that  we  had  plenty  of  amusement 
from  Cette  to  Saloniki. 

But  it  was  all  the  same  to  me,  for  since  Villiers 
has  come  and  I  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  the 
engine,  I  have  six  good  hours  a  day  in  which  to  lounge 
in  my  cabin,  playing  the  mandolin  and  reading  your 
books.  I  have  reached  Suffren,  Nelson,  Villeneuve, 
and  Trafalgar  in  the  maritime  history.  Here  is  my 
conclusion.  The  more  things  change,  the  more  it's 
just  the  same  thing. 

The  secret  route  was  altered  on  the  run  of  the 
Pamir  from  Cette  to  Saloniki.  Perhaps  the  sinking 
of  the  Mer-Morte  was  the  cause  of  this.  Fourgues 
and  Villiers  think  so.  All  I  know  is  that  we  did  n't 
have  one  patrol-boat  between  Cette  and  Point 
Cassandra.  You  who  are  on  a  warship  —  can  you 
139 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

explain  this  to  me?  I  suppose  you  protect  the  boats 
that  are  worth  the  trouble,  although  the  Provence, 
which  had  more  than  a  thousand  men  on  board, 
tripped  up  not  long  ago.  Evidently  boats  loaded 
with  mules,  wine,  and  firewood  are  not  worth  the 
trouble,  and  I  am  the  first  to  realize  that  this  is  true. 
I  have  had  rafts  made  of  the  extra  wood  I  took  and 
if  the  Pamir  drinks  her  bock,  we  can  hope  to  float. 
But  I  understand  very  well  that  no  one  is  going  to 
occupy  himself  with  a  water-bruiser  with  a  crew  of 
only  thirty-five  men,  and  if  you  tell  me  that  the 
others  are  guarded,  it's  all  right. 

At  Saloniki,  Fourgues  caught  it,  naturally.  He 
was  late  with  the  wine,  late  with  the  firewood,  late 
with  the  mules.  It  was  some  sort  of  naval  captain, 
I  'm  not  sure  what,  who  came  on  board  to  tell  this. 
If  you  ever  see  him,  he  is  a  chap  with  a  square  jaw, 
big  and  strong  as  an  oak,  who  does  n't  chew  his  words 
any  more  than  Fourgues.  So  you  can  imagine  what 
they  did  to  each  other.  Fortunately  Fourgues  was 
able  to  show  his  papers  quite  in  order  and  the  other 
had  to  take  it  all  back.  They  must  be  in  crying  need 
of  wine,  mules,  and  wood  here,  for  they  made  us 
come  alongside  the  principal  quay  of  the  port  on  the 
evening  of  our  arrival  and  we  had  given  up  all  our 
cargo  in  three  days.  We  were  then  sent  to  the  harbor 
to  wait  for  orders  and  are  having  a  lazy  time.  It's 
good  for  us,  for  we've  all  had  our  share,  ever  since 
Algiers. 

I  must  have  slept  twenty-four  hours  at  one  stretch 
140 


GENERAL  SARRAIL'S  SITUATION 

after  the  unloading  of  the  Pamir,  and  now  Fourgues, 
Villiers,  and  I  go  on  land  about  three  or  four  o'clock 
and  come  back  when  all  the  lights  are  out.  What  a 
dirty  hole  Saloniki  is!  There  are  two  or  three  cafes, 
all  crowded.  In  the  streets  the  policing  is  done  by 
Greeks,  French,  and  English,  and  one  is  about  as 
agreeable  as  the  other.  And  there  is  an  exchange  of 
eighteen  or  twenty  per  cent,  and  Fourgues  says  it 
is  shameful  that  the  French  Government  permits 
French  paper  to  lose  a  fifth  on  that  of  Greece.  And 
then  everybody  says  there  is  no  use  having  an  army 
of  the  Orient  if  the  French  quartermaster-general 
refuses  it  supplies,  personnel,  guns,  airplanes,  and 
everything.  I  could  write  volumes  if  I  told  what  I 
have  heard  here  about  the  fix  they  are  in.  I  had 
rather  be  on  the  Pamir  than  in  General  SarraiFs 
shoes,  and,  from  what  they  say,  he  is  a  sharp  one  to 
have  held  on  here  against  the  Boches,  the  Austrians, 
the  Bulgarians,  and  the  Turks,  without  counting  the 
Greeks  at  his  back,  and  with  forces  such  that  any 
general  on  the  French  front  having  as  few  would  swear 
by  all  the  gods  that  his  line  was  going  to  be  broken. 
And  in  the  mean  time,  old  man,  I  am  still  a  long 
way  from  La  Rochelle,  which  is  annoying.  It  does 
no  good  for  you  to  tell  me  that  all  is  going  well,  that 
everything  is  moving,  that  it  will  soon  be  over  —  all 
that  doesn't  help  with  my  affairs.  There  you  are 
on  the  Auvergne,  well  tied  up  at  the  foot  of  a  harbor, 
and  I  think  you  are  quite  right  to  be  there,  for  there 
is  no  use  needlessly  exposing  battleships  which  cost 
141 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

twenty-five  millions  and  carry  twelve  hundred  men. 
Nor  are  your  battleships  much  good  either  —  and 
I  '11  tell  you  later  what  Fourgues  thinks  about  that. 
At  present  there  are  only  two  things  that  count, 
according  to  my  way  of  thinking  —  the  Boche  sub- 
marines and  the  ships  of  commerce  which  provision 
the  Allies.  All  the  rest  amounts  to  absolutely  nothing 
at  all.  Only,  the  Allied  admirals  are  neither  on  the 
German  submarines  nor  on  the  ships  of  commerce. 
Well,  then,  they  are  gargling  their  throats  with  code- 
telegrams  while  the  little  boats  that  put  to  sea  are 
being  torpedoed.  But  Fourgues'  cards  say  that  the 
Pamir  won't  be  torpedoed  this  year.  As  the  war 
ought  to  be  over  before  191 7,  the  rest  is  unimportant. 
Good-bye,  old  pal.  Send  me  your  photograph  as 
ensign  and  don't  have  a  disdainful  air  when  it's 
taken.  We  are  putting  at  least  as  much  into  this  on 
the  Pamir  as  on  the  Auvergne,  where  I  send  you  a 
good  hearty  handshake. 

Bilbao,  April  27,  1916 
Dear  Old  Man,  — 

We  are  here  to  get  iron.  You  know  it's  good 
in  this  country,  and  we  have  n't  any  left  in  France. 
But  I  will  start  again  at  Saloniki  where  I  left  off. 

They  had  no  idea  what  to  do  with  the  Pamir  down 
there.  We  should  be  there  yet  if  Fourgues  had  not 
irritated  all  the  big  aces  of  the  navy  so  that  they  told 
him  at  last  to  get  out  by  all  means  and  go  to  Malta, 
where  there  might  be  something  for  us  to  do. 

142 


SOME  HEROIC  GREEKS 

We  left  in  ballast,  nothing  in  the  hold  and  a  few 
passengers,  young  fellows  from  nineteen  to  twenty- 
five  years  of  age  who  were  leaving  Saloniki  to  fin- 
ish their  higher  education  in  Spain,  Switzerland,  or 
Holland. 

All  these  young  people  were  very  pro-French  and 
Venizelist,  and  Fourgues  was  astonished  at  their 
going  away  from  Saloniki  to  study  elsewhere  than 
in  France,  especially  as  they  said  with  the  grandest 
gestures  that  the  hour  of  Venizelos  was  about  to 
ring  and  that  he  would  at  last  espouse  the  cause  of 
the  great  and  generous  nation  which  —  who  —  of 
whom  —  and  patati  and  patata  —  and  that  they 
should  form  an  army  in  Greece  to  fight  at  our  side 
and  that  Greece  would  come  into  her  own. 

Fourgues  chatted  with  them  in  order  to  pump 
them  and  after  a  while  he  understood. 

"You  see,"  he  said,  "these  tender  hearts  are  skip- 
ping out  of  Saloniki  because  they  are  afraid  they  will 
be  obliged  to  enlist  if  Venizelos  makes  up  an  army. 
They  are,  as  we  say,  brave,  but  not  rash!  They  don't 
go  into  French  territory  because  they  think  they 
might  be  called  back,  whereas  in  a  neutral  country 
they  will  be  perfectly  safe.  I  don't  know  whether 
the  ancient  Greeks  were  as  brave  as  the  historians 
say,  but  those  of  to-day  look  to  me  like  heroes,  in  the 
sense  that  they  love  to  see  a  good  fight." 

During  the  trip  from  Saloniki  to  Malta  we  actually 
met  some  patrol-boats  off  the  coast  by  Matapan;  the 
rest  of  the  time  —  nothing  at  all!  I  wonder  why  there 
143 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

are  people  who  ask  what  good  it  does  for  us  to  be  at 
Saloniki.  Such  idiots  ought  to  go  down  there  and  see 
how,  if  we  had  no  one  there  to  keep  Constantine's 
mouth  shut,  Sophie's  husband  would  have  handed 
his  country  over  to  the  Boches  long  since  and  offered 
all  his  ports  to  their  submarines. 

And  that  would  be  a  nice  fix!  Now  that  the  sub- 
marines are  already  hard  at  it,  —  no  matter  what 
people  say,  —  you  can  see  what  it  would  be  like  if 
they  could  utilize  the  Greek  ports  and  islands.  There 
would  no  longer  be  any  way  of  getting  through  down 
there;  the  route  to  Egypt  and  India  would  be  cut  off 
and  we  might  as  well  give  the  Boches  all  that  side  of 
the  map. 

At  Malta  we  arrived  like  a  fish  in  Lent,  and  as  the 
English  don't  like  to  have  their  ports  too  crowded, 
they  told  the  French  Mission  to  get  the  Pamir  out 
of  the  way  at  once.  As  no  one  knew  what  to  do  with 
us,  they  sent  us  to  Bizerta  where  they  said  that  per- 
haps we  might  find  orders.  We  left  after  one  night 
in  port,  still  empty,  but  it's  the  Princess  who  will 
pay  the  bill.  There  was  one  passenger  who  arrived 
with  a  valise  at  the  last  minute  and  begged  us  to 
take  her  along.  She  was  the  wife  of  an  ensign  in  the 
navy,  and  as  he  had  been  with  his  ship,  she  had 
not  seen  him  since  August,  iq,i4-  Talk  about  adven- 
tures —  I'll  tell  you  one  I 

Ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  cruiser  of 
the  little  lady's  husband  had  rolled  around,  to  Syria, 
Egypt,  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  and  other  places,  and 

144 


THE  ADVENTURES  OF  AN  ENSIGN'S  WIFE 

she  had  remained  with  her  family  in  a  village  in  the 
Juras  where  she  suffered  death  and  damnation  think- 
ing of  her  husband  here,  there,  and  everywhere.  She 
is  the  daughter  of  a  ship  inspector,  but  about  as 
much  at  home  in  navigation  as  I  am  in  theology;  on 
a  boat  she  is  like  a  chicken  that  has  just  found  a 
knife.  Every  mail  her  husband  wrote  her  to  wait, 
that  his  cruiser  would  come  nearer  to  France  some 
day,  and  then  he  would  let  her  know.  The  first  of 
March  she  received  a  telegram  from  Port  Said:  "Sail- 
ing ten  days  Malta  repairs  Come  immediately." 

She  received  this  in  her  mountains  one  hour  before 
the  train  left  which  connected  with  the  express  for 
Marseilles.  Taking  just  time  to  pack  a  valise,  she 
started  and  reached  Marseilles  the  next  day,  believ- 
ing that  it  was  only  necessary  to  arrive  on  the  quay 
in  order  to  take  the  first  boat,  as  in  Jules  Verne.  All 
day  long  she  was  juggled  from  the  Cannebiere  to  the 
National  Port,  asking  everybody,  customs  officers, 
police,  sailors,  etc.,  where  one  took  the  boat  for 
Malta.  Finally  her  cabman  saw  that  she  was  not 
making  any  progress,  so  he  took  her  to  naval  head- 
quarters. She  says  she  can't  tell  an  admiral  from  a 
station-master  because  their  uniforms  are  so  much 
alike;  so  you  can  see  how  they  must  have  laughed 
at  headquarters  when  she  said  that  she  wanted  to  see 
her  husband  at  Malta  and  that  was  all  there  was 
about  it.  In  short,  they  explained  to  her  that  the 
packet  had  left  the  evening  before,  and  there  would 
not  be  another  for  a  week,  so  that  she  could  not 
145 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

reach  Malta  for  ten  or  eleven  days.  The  little  lady 
was  beside  herself.  A  man,  you  or  I,  would  have 
said,  Oh,  hell!  But  I  believe  if  a  woman  got  it  into 
her  head  to  see  her  husband  she  would  go  all  the  way 
on  her  elbows  rather  than  give  up.  She  took  the  train 
for  Italy  and  made  the  entire  circuit,  Nice,  Genoa, 
Rome,  Naples,  Reggio,  the  Strait,  Messina,  and 
Syracuse  —  three  days  and  a  half  without  stopping 
and  third-class  because  she  was  afraid  her  money 
would  give  out.  She  herself  does  not  remember  how 
she  was  able  to  disentangle  everything  in  order  to 
have  the  passports  and  that  sort  of  thing.  All  she 
remembers  is  that  she  showed  all  the  authorities  her 
marriage  certificate  and  her  husband's  telegram. 
They  tried  everywhere  to  stop  her.  Then  she  would 
start  explaining  and  crying  and  it  would  end  by  her 
being  permitted  to  go  on.  Add  to  this  that  she  can't 
even  say  bread  in  Italian!  She  ate  as  she  could, 
afraid  to  get  out  of  the  train  in  a  station  for  fear  it 
would  go  off  and  leave  her.  It  made  no  difference, 
she  did  n't  give  up  and  she  reached  Syracuse.  The 
packet  was  not  going  to  leave  for  two  days  and  she 
did  n't  have  money  enough  for  the  passage.  At  the 
French  Consulate  they  sent  her  away  because  she 
was  neither  indigent  nor  anything  else,  nor  was  she 
in  the  service.  They  told  her  to  write  home  for  money 
as  the  telegraphic  money-orders  no  longer  exist;  but 
writing  would  have  taken  a  week  or  more. 

Only  a  woman  could  get  herself  out  of  such  a  situ- 
ation. High  and  dry  in  Sicily  without  a  cent,  unable 

14G 


THE  ADVENTURES  OF  AN  ENSIGN'S  WIFE 

to  get  anything  from  her  husband  or  from  home,  and 
nevertheless  to  arrive  in  Malta  —  it's  a  mystery  to 
you  and  me  who  are,  nevertheless,  old  foxes  at  travel- 
ling. She  pawned  her  gold  watch  and  a  ring  with  a 
stone;  then  she  found  out  in  some  way  that  there 
was  a  sailing-vessel  carrying  cork  and  sulphur  which 
would  sail  for  Malta  the  next  day.  By  this  means 
she  made  a  day,  as  the  packet  stops  at  all  the  ports 
and  the  sailboat  went  straight  across  without  put- 
ting in. 

I  should  like  to  know  what  she  did  to  make  the  old 
Sicilian  captain  of  the  vessel  take  her.  She  put  it 
over!  Of  course,  she  is  quite  pretty,  about  as  big  as 
a  pat  of  butter  and  she  does  n't  keep  her  eyes  in  her 
pocket.  She  thinks  and  talks  of  nothing  but  her  hus- 
band, but  in  order  to  get  to  him  she  knows  very  well 
how  to  smile  and  jolly  people  along.  She  says  that 
with  the  Sicilian  captain  she  had  only  to  show  her 
heart  and  the  word  "Malta"  in  the  telegram  and 
that  that  finished  him!  Well,  I  should  like  to  have 
seen  it. 

At  Malta  she  took  a  small  boat  in  order  to  make  a 
tour  of  the  port.  She  had  never  seen  her  husband's 
cruiser  and  all  that  she  knew  of  it  was  that  it  had 
three  smokestacks,  two  masts,  and  a  stem  en  eperon. 
She  was  sure  of  this  much  from  the  poor  photograph 
she  carried.  So  she  pointed  out  to  the  boatman  all 
the  ships  with  three  smokestacks  and  he  went  up  to 
them.  As  the  names  are  painted  out  since  the  war, 
she  asked  everywhere,  "Is  this  the  cruiser  Bayard?" 
147 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Then  some  one  would  explain  that  the  Bayard  was 
not  at  Malta;  but  she  was  afraid  they  were  fooling 
her  and  kept  on  searching.  Finally  she  was  forced  to 
see  that  the  Bayard  was  not  there.  She  was  told  that 
it  had  left  three  days  before,  but  that  in  time  of  war 
no  one  knew  where  a  ship  went  and  that  only  the 
admiral  could  tell  her  —  if  he  happened  to  be  in  a 
good  humor  that  day;  unfortunately  he  was  more 
apt  to  be  abusive.  That  didn't  matter;  she  asked 
where  she  might  see  the  admiral!  They  laughed  in 
her  face,  and  told  her  that  this  admiral  was  a  bache- 
lor and  nothing  enraged  him  more  than  to  have  his 
officers  see  their  wives,  because  he  said  that  war- 
time was  not  like  peace.  Finally  she  had  the  name 
of  the  admiral's  ship.  Well,  I  should  like  to  have 
seen  the  collision  between  the  lady  and  the  admiral! 

She  tells  merely  that  he  asked  her  if  she  was  crazy, 
and  said  that  her  husband  had  done  very  wrong  to 
telegraph  his  whereabouts  and  that  he  was  going  to 
give  strict  orders  that  such  a  thing  must  not  occur 
again;  that  there  was  nothing  for  her  to  do  but  make 
for  France  at  once;  that  it  was  useless  to  chase  after 
her  husband  upon  the  vast  ocean  when  the  war  would 
perhaps  be  over  before  she  had  caught  up  with  him. 

Fortunately,  on  leaving  the  ship,  broken-hearted, 
she  ran  into  an  officer  to  whom  she  said:  "And  you, 
monsieur,  will  you  not  tell  me  where  the  Bayard 
is?"  The  officer,  a  translator  of  dispatches,  was  a 
friend  of  her  husband  and  happened  to  know.  He 
took  her  to  his  stateroom  in  order  that  no  one  should 

148 


THE  ADVENTURES  OF  AN  ENSIGN'S  WIFE 

hear  them,  and  under  seal  of  secrecy  told  her  that 
the  Bayard  was  at  Bizerta  for  repairs.  It  would 
remain  there  eight  or  ten  days  and  she  could  join 
it  if  there  was  a  boat.  All  the  regular  service  has 
stopped.  There  is  nothing  now  but  military  ships 
or  ships  that  have  been  taken  into  military  service 
and  which  must  not  take  passengers.  On  these  she 
could  not  go  except  by  fraud  and  with  serious  risk, 
if,  indeed,  any  one  would  take  her.  But  she  said 
that  no  one  could  shoot  her  for  that,  and  if  they 
dragged  her  husband  into  it  just  because  she  went 
to  look  for  him,  she  would  make  him  hand  in  his 
resignation  after  the  war  and  that  was  all  there  was 
about  it!  She  does  n't  lose  her  bearings,  this  little 
lady!  She  had  never  seen  the  young  officer,  the  dis- 
patch translator,  but  she  simply  annexed  him.  She 
borrowed  a  hundred  francs  from  him  at  once  in  the 
name  of  her  husband,  and  then  she  told  him  to  in- 
form her  immediately  of  any  boat,  no  matter  what, 
that  was  leaving  for  Tunis.  But  the  officer  was 
obdurate,  for  he  said  if  the  admiral  found  it  out, 
he  would  put  him  under  arrest  without  hesitation. 
The  little  lady  must  have  sent  him  one  of  her  coy 
glances,  for  he  gave  in.  And  then  she  told  him  that 
she  would  install  herself  with  her  valise  on  a  bench 
in  the  custom-office  for  the  night,  so  that  the  ensign 
would  n't  have  to  run  to  a  hotel,  and  so  that  she 
would  be  ready  to  jump  into  the  first  boat  he  pointed 
out  to  her. 

In  spite  of  his  advice  she  did  as  she  said  and  es- 
149 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

tablished  herself  in  the  custom-house.  The  officers 
wanted  to  put  her  out,  but  she  nailed  herself  to  a 
bench  with  her  valise,  and  as  she  did  n't  look  like 
a  conspirator,  they  left  her  there  and  she  slept  with 
her  head  against  the  wall.  In  the  morning  one  of  the 
sergeants  went  to  get  her  some  tea  and  toast  and 
she  made  her  toilet  in  the  office  of  the  customs  men, 
as  though  she  were  at  home.  Just  at  this  moment 
the  ensign  of  the  admiral's  ship  came  to  tell  her  that 
the  Pamir,  having  arrived  the  evening  before,  was 
to  sail  at  eight  that  morning  for  Bizerta,  but  that 
the  commander  of  the  Pamir  was  known  for  his 
disagreeable  character  and  that  he  would  send  her 
away  promptly.  Ah,  ouiche!  Ten  minutes  after- 
wards, while  we  were  lifting  anchor,  she  climbed  our 
ladder,  which  was  still  down,  bounded  onto  the 
bridge  as  though  she  had  never  done  anything  else 
all  her  life,  and  went  straight  up  to  Fourgues,  for 
all  the  world  like  Jeanne  d'Arc  before  the  Dauphin. 
Fourgues  made  a  face,  and  while  she  got  off  her 
little  speech,  assumed  the  expression  he  wears  be- 
fore a  head  wind.  That  would  have  been  enough  to 
silence  me,  but  she  went  on  and  on!  She  begged, 
she  smiled,  and  finally,  as  Fourgues  kept  on  saying 
nothing  and  examining  her  from  top  to  toe,  —  but 
I  could  see  his  hands  fidgeting  behind  his  back  as 
they  do  when  he  is  enjoying  himself,  —  she  burst 
into  sobs,  sat  down  on  her  valise,  patted  her  eyes 
with  a  handkerchief  the  size  of  a  nut,  and  kept 
saying  over  and  over:  — 

150 


THE  ADVENTURES  OF  AN  ENSIGN'S  WIFE 

"How  unhappy  I  am!  Oh,  how  unhappy  I  am!" 

Well,  Fourgues  took  off  his  cap,  went  over  to  her, 
lifted  her  by  the  chin  like  a  good  papa,  and  said:  — 

"So  it's  true,  little  girl,  all  this  stuff  that  you 
have  been  telling  me?  Eh  bien!  You're  in  luck  — 
there's  an  empty  cabin!  Go  and  wash  your  face!  I 
don't  want  that  fortunate  husband  of  yours  to  see 
you  ill!" 

Old  man,  she  fell  on  his  neck  and  hugged  him! 
Fourgues  let  her  do  it  and  returned  the  favor.  And 
then,  tapping  her  on  the  cheek:  — 

"It's  all  right,  little  girl!  I  have  a  daughter  of 
your  age,  and  I  only  hope  she'll  do  half  as  much 
when  she  is  married.  And  now,  go  and  make  your- 
self pretty  and  you  can  tell  us  all  about  it  at  lunch- 
eon —  twelve  sharp." 

Well,  old  man,  we  had  the  most  charming  trip 
—  lady's  weather,  bright  sunlight,  and  that  little 
woman  radiating  happiness  from  her  hair  to  her 
heels.  Her  little  valise  was  a  malicious  thing;  out  of 
it  she  pulled  ribbons,  bits  of  lace,  and  all  sorts  of 
pretty  things,  and  when  she  came  out  of  Blangy's 
cabin  at  noon,  you  would  never  have  believed  it  was 
the  same  person  who  had  arrived  in  the  morning 
with  her  hair  coming  down,  wearing  a  crumpled 
duster.  How  we  laughed  at  table  when  she  told  us 
her  misadventures!  Fourgues  could  hardly  contain 
himself  for  joy. 

She  stayed  on  the  bridge  all  the  afternoon  and  I 
explained  everything  to  her  —  the  compass,  the 
151 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

charts,  the  signal  lights,  the  navigation,  and  what- 
not. She  could  n't  have  understood  a  thing,  but  she 
smiled  and  nodded  her  head.  If  I  had  spoken  Chi- 
nese to  her,  she  would  still  have  smiled  and  danced 
up  and  down.  That  night  at  dinner,  Fourgues  seized 
the  occasion  to  give  Villiers  and  me  a  discourse  on 
the  heart,  in  order  to  encourage  us  to  marry  soon. 
Can't  you  just  hear  him?  All  the  strings  of  the  lyre! 
As  far  as  I  am  concerned  I  did  n't  need  so  much  — 
I  'm  only  waiting  for  the  chance.  But  Villiers  tried 
to  be  smart  and  offered  buis,  ifs,  and  fors.  And  then 
the  little  lady  took  a  hand  and  did  him  up  in  five 
seconds,  and  Villiers  ended  by  confessing  himself 
beaten  and  begging  her  to  find  him  some  one  who 
resembled  her  as  closely  as  possible.  And  so  we  were 
all  comfortable  and  happy.  She  went  to  bed  and 
slept  a  full  fourteen  hours.  When  the  Pamir  reached 
Bizerta,  about  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  she  came 
out  of  her  cabin  as  fresh  as  a  rose,  and  bon  Dieu  de 
bois,  her  ensign  of  a  husband  must  find  that  pleas- 
anter  nights  than  the  hard  wind  in  his  face!  It  hap- 
pened that  the  Pamir  was  sent  to  Sidi-Abdallah, 
right  where  the  Bayard  was  in  dry-dock,  and  that  we 
anchored  close  to  land. 

"There  is  your  ship,  little  girl,"  said  Fourgues, 
"  and  your  husband  is  on  it.  Greet  him  for  me  if  you 
think  of  it.  And  be  assured  nothing  will  happen  to 
him.  With  a  little  wife  like  you  he  is  fixed!" 

She  trotted  off  without  waiting  for  anything  more, 
—  fairly  dancing,  —  only  just  a  good-bye  from  her 

152 


THE  ADVENTURES  OF  AN  ENSIGN'S  WIFE 

finger-tips  —  except  that  she  gave  Fourgues  an- 
other hug. 

You  must  forgive  me  for  having  told  you  all  this. 
But  you  see  on  the  Pamir  we  have  so  few  distrac- 
tions and  it  was  worth  more  than  all  the  stupidities 
of  ports  and  the  rambling  around  at  sea.  It's  super- 
fluous to  say  that  that  little  woman  had  nerve! 
If  everybody  had  as  much  the  war  would  last  six 
months  the  less. 

We  had  no  time  to  find  out  what  happened  to  her, 
for  the  Pamir  was  immediately  packed  off  to  Bilbao, 
—  still  empty,  —  which  means  that  the  Govern- 
ment will  have  paid  the  owners  a  voyage  from  Sal- 
oniki  to  Bilbao  gratis.  But  that's  no  affair  of  ours, 
is  it?  We  sail,  we  execute  orders  —  even  when  there 
are  n't  any! 

So  we  stopped  at  Sidi-Abdallah  two  days,  just 
time  enough  to  provision,  and  started  for  Bilbao, 
where  the  Pamir  was  to  get  iron  ore.  The  voyage 
seemed  rather  dismal  to  all  of  us  after  the  passage 
from  Malta,  and  we  spent  the  time  going  over  what 
she  had  told  us.  Fourgues  says  it  is  stupid  to  pro- 
hibit the  officers  and  sailors  from  telegraphing 
where  they  are  going.  If  it's  because  there  is  dan- 
ger of  leaks  in  the  telegraph-offices,  they  have  only 
to  employ  people  who  are  above  suspicion,  mobilize 
them,  and  bind  them  to  secrecy;  whereas,  especially 
on  the  foreign  lines,  they  still  keep  many  who  come 
from  no  one  knows  where  and  among  whom  there 
are  evidently  spies.  But  the  naval  authorities,  in- 
153 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

stead  of  getting  rid  of  those  who  don't  give  a  hang 
and  are  in  a  position  to  let  things  out,  prefer  to 
imprison  the  sailors  —  who  suffer  dreadfully  —  be- 
cause the  sailors  can't  move  and  can  be  punished 
if  they  make  any  objection.  That  was  the  first 
point. 

Afterwards  he  said  that  it  was  pretty  tough  that 
in  the  navy  no  one  gets  regular  leave  such  as  they 
have  in  the  army,  and  that  it's  a  good  way  to  make 
the  sailors  grumble.  And  then,  what  advantage  is 
there  in  repairing  boats  at  Bizerta,  where  there  is 
almost  nothing  in  the  way  of  a  plant  and  no  parts 
for  refitting,  instead  of  sending  them  to  Toulon? 
The  route  from  Bizerta  is  almost  the  same  as  that 
from  the  Orient  and  there's  no  saving  of  coal,  while 
all  the  material  for  repairs  and  refitting  must  be 
sent  to  Bizerta,  as  well  as  coal  and  everything  else, 
necessitating  the  employment  of  a  lot  of  boats  which 
cost  the  eyes  out  of  your  head  like  the  Pamir,  and 
making  delays  of  loading  at  Toulon  and  unloading 
at  Bizerta.  Whereas,  if  the  battleships  and  cruisers 
went  to  Toulon,  everything  would  be  on  a  prac- 
tical basis  and  at  the  end  of  railroad  and  telegraph 
lines.  What  with  one  thing  and  another,  this  little 
establishment  must  have  cost  some  hundreds  of 
millions  without  a  single  battleship  having  gained  a 
day,  while  not  a  little  material  will  have  been  sunk 
by  submarines. 

Speaking  of  submarines,  we  wish  you  would  tell 
us  how  long  they  are  going  to  keep  up  that  farce  of 

154 


FOURGUES  ON  THE  SUBMARINE  DANGER 

having  the  big  ships  sail  in  broad  daylight  on  pre- 
tended secret  routes  which  all  the  Germans  know. 
Let  them  send  the  Pamir  and  others  of  her  class 
out  to  be  sunk  —  that  will  still  pass  —  because  offi- 
cially, of  course,  there  is  nothing  to  be  feared  from 
the  submarine  warfare;  but  battleships  or  cruisers 
which  cost  fifty  and  sixty  millions  with  a  thousand 
men  on  board  —  Fourgues  thinks  that 's  a  little  too 
much.  I  give  him  the  floor. 

"It's  all  very  pretty,"  he  says,  "to  pretend  that 
the  German  submarines  are  a  joke.  But  it  would  be 
better  to  take  common-sense  precautions.  I'm  not 
a  submarine  officer,  but  I  have  seen  several  such 
officers,  and  they  say  that  at  night  they  can't  see 
anything  in  their  periscopes  and  are  obliged  to  navi- 
gate on  the  surface.  Consequently  they  are  much 
less  dangerous  at  night.  So  there's  nothing  to  do 
but  have  the  big  war-vessels  sail  at  night  and  hug 
the  coast  in  the  daytime,  or  better,  anchor  in  port, 
especially  in  the  Mediterranean,  where  there  is  no 
lack  of  coast  or  ports.  The  voyages  would  take  a 
little  longer,  but  that's  worth  as  much  as  fifty  mil- 
lions and  a  thousand  men  sent  to  the  bottom. 
It's  like  the  transporting  of  troops  and  material.  At 
first,  I  did  n't  understand  why  they  made  them 
start  from  Marseilles  for  Saloniki,  instead  of  from 
Taranto  or  Brindisi,  the  Italians  being  our  allies. 
That  would  make  three  or  four  days  less  on  the 
water,  that  much  less  risk,  and  not  a  few  millions 
saved.    But  if  at  any  price  they  must  go  by  sea, 

155 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

it's  a  mystery  to  me  why  they  don't  sail  by  day 
quite  near  the  Italian,  African,  or  Greek  coasts.  In 
the  first  place,  there  is  less  danger  of  being  torpe- 
doed, for  the  coasts  are  easier  to  patrol;  and  then, 
in  case  of  torpedoing,  there  would  frequently  be 
time  to  run  ashore  and  the  ship  might  be  saved  and 
the  lifeboats  might  not  be  lost  either.  It's  all  child- 
ishly simple,  but  it  would  take  the  Devil  himself  to 
make  the  responsible  people  understand  that  war 
is  not  peace.  When  it  comes  to  insulting  folks,  the 
big  vegetables  know  well  enough  how  to  say  that 
'war  is  war!'  but  in  place  of  taking  measures  they 
prefer  to  spit  out  paper  and  paper  and  still  more 
paper!  This  submarine  business  is  going  to  cost 
them  dear.  But,  you  know,  my  children,  when  the 
ships  begin  to  drop  like  skittles,  they'll  shriek  and 
say  that  the  Boches  are  pirates;  that  everything 
had  been  done,  but  no  one  knew  they  were  as  wicked 
as  all  that!  Because  the  public  and  the  deputies  are 
in  total  ignorance,  the  vegetables  will  be  pitied  and 
will  anoint  themselves  great  men  —  while  the  boats 
keep  on  going  down.  After  a  year  we'll  be  in  a  nice 
fix,  without  mentioning  how  the  country  will  have 
to  tighten  its  belt  because  there  will  be  no  way  of 
feeding  it  —  steel  and  everything  else  short.  Then 
the  public  will  make  some  music,  but  no  one  will 
really  know  how  it  came  about  and  the  censor  will 
keep  on  strangling  all  those  like  you  and  me  who 
see  what  ought  to  be  done;  so  the  submarines  will 
clean  us  out  completely." 

156 


GERMAN  MASTERY  OF  THE  SEA 

When  he  once  starts  in,  Fourgues  has  a  heavy 
hand.  But  Villiers  thinks  he  is  right  and  so  do  I,  and 
sometimes  we  wonder  if  all  these  people  haven't 
lost  their  wits.  Well,  who  lives  will  learn  and  we 
can  die  but  once.  If  the  Pamir  goes  down  and  we 
drink  our  cup,  at  least  we  know  whose  fault  it  is. 

We  reached  Bilbao  pretty  well  shaken  up  from 
having  travelled  empty.  Going  up  the  coast  of  Por- 
tugal, we  ran  into  fearful  weather.  I  will  pass  over 
all  the  horrid  row  Fourgues  had  finding  out  where 
and  how  to  get  his  ore.  It  looks  as  though  the  emis- 
saries France  has  here  pass  their  time  playing  bridge 
instead  of  looking  after  their  business.  They  must 
send  down  fellows  who  are  well  ambushed  and  pre- 
fer to  feel  of  good  money  at  a  safe  distance  from  the 
front,  but  who  can  look  after  transports  and  pro- 
visioning about  as  well  as  I  can  play  the  organ.  And 
you  should  see  how  preoccupied  they  are  with  the 
Germans  and  with  all  the  Germans  do  down  here. 
You  might  as  well  call  the  Boches  the  masters!  They 
know  everything,  see  everything  that  sails,  and  in- 
form their  ambassador  at  Madrid,  who  must  direct 
at  least  fifty  thousand  Boches  with  a  nod  of  his 
head.  There  are  spies  everywhere,  but  we  have  n't 
any  anywhere.  Good  lord,  it's  lucky  for  us  that 
Germany's  position  in  relation  to  the  sea  is  what  it 
is  —  in  a  sort  of  blind  alley!  Only  to  see  how  she 
has  succeeded  in  making  fools  of  us  on  the  sea,  at 
arm's  length,  as  it  were,  one  can  be  certain  that  if 
we  were  in  her  place  and  she  in  ours,  we  should  have 
157 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

been  wiped  out  long  since  and  should  n't  be  getting 
so  much  as  a  gramme  of  merchandise  from  outside. 

All  around,  down  here,  there  are  wireless  sta- 
tions and  spy  stations  on  the  coast  to  inform  the 
Boche  submarines.  They  have  only  to  listen  and 
then  go  straight  ahead.  Neither  Fourgues  nor  any 
one  else  on  board  understands  the  tales  about  stores 
of  oil  which  the  Germans,  according  to  French 
papers,  are  keeping  in  neutral  countries.  They  say 
that  the  Boches  have  supply-bases  in  Greece,  Spain, 
and  elsewhere,  and  that  without  these  they  could 
not  work  as  they  do.  That's  all  sheer  mystifica- 
tion. Every  time  any  one  looks  for  these  bases  they 
are  n't  to  be  found  —  because  there  are  n't  any.  The 
Boches  carry  as  much  as  fifteen  or  twenty  days' 
supply  in  their  submarines.  People  told  us  that  in 
Bilbao,  as  they  did  in  Norway  last  year.  Well, 
then,  will  you  tell  me  where  they  would  need  to 
get  more?  From  Zeebrugge  to  the  Mediterranean 
does  n't  take  twenty  days,  and  in  the  Mediterranean 
they  have  Pola  and  Cattaro,  the  Bulgarian  coast 
and  Constantinople,  Syria,  the  points  of  Tripoli 
which  have  been  retaken  by  the  Turks,  and  those 
parts  of  Morocco  that  we  have  n't  got.  No  matter 
what  they  do,  they  are  never  more  than  three  or 
four  days  from  a  friendly  base,  so  they  don't  need 
to  go  to  the  neutrals.  We  look  like  idiots,  accusing 
the  neutrals  of  things  of  which  they  are  n't  guilty 
and  which  can't  be  proved,  when  there  are  so  many 
worse  that  we  don't  dare  mention.   All  this  would 

158 


LOADING  IRON  ORE  AT  BILBAO 

be  a  joke  if  it  did  n't  prolong  the  war,  but  it  will 
end  by  costing  us  dear. 

Well,  this  time  the  Pamir  doesn't  sail  empty  — 
she  has  three  thousand  tons  of  good  ore  which  the 
Boches  won't  get.  We  don't  know  yet  where  we  are 
going,  but  we  shall  hardly  leave  before  a  week,  the 
loading  is  so  slow. 

Upon  which,  old  man,  shake  hands!  I  wish  we 
were  going  to  Bordeaux  because  at  Bordeaux  there's 
a  train  for  La  Rochelle.  Good-bye. 


PART  FOUR 

Baltimore,  U.S.A.,  July  16, 1916 
My  dear  Old  Pal,  — 

Is  n't  it  absurd  that  with  two  years'  interval 
I  am  again  passing  the  i4th  of  July  in  the  United 
States?  Only,  this  time  you  aren't  here  and  there's 
not  the  slightest  chance  of  our  running  into  each 
other.  I  wonder  if  I  should  find  you  changed  after 
all  this  time!  Perhaps  I  should  n't  know  you  any 
more  now  that  you  have  shaved  off  your  moustache 
in  order  to  be  like  all  your  friends  —  which  is  a  pose, 
old  man,  but  it  won't  go  down  with  me!  Nor  am  I 
the  skinny  little  chap  you  used  to  knock  around  to 
see  if  I  could  keep  on  my  keel.  I  have  the  beard  of  a 
missionary  and  my  fiancee  says  that  I  have  more 
force  and  that  now  I  look  like  a  man.  So  much  for  the 
physical.  As  for  the  rest,  it's  even  worse.  You  can 
well  believe  that  two  years  of  hard  labor  like  what 
we  have  on  the  Pamir  —  and  all  that  we  have  seen 
and  all  that  we  have  heard  —  such  things  steady  the 
head.  At  La  Rochelle  they  listened  to  me  as  to  an 
oracle,  even  the  old  people,  which  is  quite  different 
from  what  it  was  two  years  ago.  Dame,  only  hear 
him!  He  has  pondered  a  little,  he  has  his  little  ideas! 
Before,  I  was  just  happy-go-lucky,  I  did  n't  give  a 
hang,  I  found  everything  perfectly  simple  as  long  as 
I  had  something  to  eat  and  my  feet  high  and  dry  on 

160 


THE  BLUE  DEVILS  IN  BALTIMORE 

the  bridge  if  we  were  getting  heavy  seas.  Now  I  see 
more  clearly  the  whys  and  the  hows.  I  find  it's  more 
complicated,  and  there  are  even  times  when  I  think 
I  might  be  quite  embarrassed  if  I  had  to  give  the 
orders  for  the  war.  It's  age  coming  —  maturity,  as 
they  call  it.  And  so,  alas,  I  am  aware  that  the  more 
it  keeps  on  coming,  the  more  things  will  multiply  and 
embellish  themselves  until,  if  I  ever  have  any  real 
responsibilities,  I  shall  be  much  too  ancient  and  all 
tangled  up  in  a  lot  of  considerations  which  will  hinder 
me  from  acting.  After  two  years  of  war,  there  is  one 
conclusion  of  which  I  am  sure:  All  the  chiefs  and 
manitous  are  too  old,  and  what  disgusts  me  is  that 
there's  a  chance  I  should  do  the  same  as  they. 
Every  one  is  n't  Fourgues,  who  will  soon  be  fifty, 
and  who  can  decide  in  five  seconds  because  he  is 
willing  to  take  responsibility.  But  for  one  like  that 
there  are  a  hundred  ciphers,  and  the  country  is 
suffering  from  it. 

You  will  wonder  if  I  am  having  the  blues  because 
I  tell  you  this  nonsense  instead  of  the  history  of  the 
Pamir,  which,  you  say,  amuses  you.  The  i4th  of 
July  far  from  France,  without  a  chum  with  whom  to 
chin  —  it  gives  me  regular  blue  devils.  Fourgues  and 
Villiers  —  who  are  ever  so  kind  —  tried  to  distract 
me  at  a  music-hall  in  Baltimore,  but  I  was  bored. 
And  then,  hang  it  all  —  But  I  won't  go  on.  Let's 
get  back  to  the  subject. 

I  was  able  to  get  to  La  Rochelle.  We  sent  you  a 
card,  my  fiancee  and  I.  After  two  weeks  at  Bilbao, 
161 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  Pamir  was  sent  to  Boucau  to  unload  her  ore. 
That's  a  nasty  harbor  where  you  roll  from  side  to 
side  with  no  swell  at  all  and  where  the  bottom  is  bad. 
Seeing  that  we  should  be  long  in  unloading,  as  there 
were  no  facilities,  Fourgues  let  me  light  out  for  La 
Rochelle  and  I  did  n't  stop  to  ask  for  details.  I  was 
perfectly  satisfied  that  trains  go  fast,  though  I  did 
wonder  how  long  they  were  going  to  keep  up  this 
levity  of  burning  coal  for  people  on  pleasure-trips 
instead  of  saving  it  for  the  soldiers  and  the  armies. 
When  I  said  that,  I  was  told  that  the  country  would 
rebel  if  there  were  restrictions.  That  is  stupid  reason- 
ing, and  they  will  have  to  come  to  it  anyway,  and  then 
the  Government  will  seem  to  have  been  forced  and 
not  to  have  foreseen  anything;  whereas,  if  they  had 
begun  at  once,  no  one  would  be  astonished.  There 
have  been  other  surprises  since  the  war  began  and 
the  country  has  shoulders  sufficiently  solid  to  bear 
the  truth.  Only,  it's  the  order  to  say  that  every- 
thing is  all  right  and  that  we  shall  never  be  obliged 
to  do  as  the  Boches.  At  home  I  saw  a  lot  of  friends 
who  told  me  about  stories  appearing  in  the  censored 
papers,  saying  that  things  are  going  well  and  that 
we  have  all  we  need  and  that  it  is  an  affair  of  only 
three  or  four  months.  Where  do  all  those  stories 
come  from? 


They  have  only  to  come  out  and  they 
can  see  for  themselves.    It's  like  the  Boche  sub- 

162 


THE  SUBMARINE  QUESTION 

marines.  On  that  subject,  old  man,  we  of  the  sea 
have  only  to  keep  our  mouths  shut.  Everybody 
knows  more  about  that  than  we.  During  the  first 
two  or  three  days  that  I  was  at  home,  I  said  what 
I  thought,  but  after  a  while  I  stopped  because  they 
demonstrated  to  me  by  a  plus  b  that  the  submarines 
were  a  joke.  All  the  stories  I  told  of  the  sea,  of  my 
voyages  and  what  I  had  seen,  they  listened  to  atten- 
tively and  it  was  flattering.  Even  the  story  of  the 
Mer-Morte  was  considered  very  interesting.  Really, 
it  was  for  all  the  world  like  concierges  reading  a  novel 
and  gloating  over  the  sensational  details!  But  when 
I  said  that  the  Provence,  the  Ville-de-la-Ciotat,  the 
Lusitania,  and  the  rest  were  only  the  prologue,  they 
called  me  a  pessimist,  and  told  me  that  a  lot  of  sub- 
marines had  been  sunk  and  that  it  was  official  that 
there  were  n't  any  more,  and  that  as  only  a  thou- 
sandth of  the  traffic  had  been  lost,  anyway,  these 
ships  did  n't  count.  The  stupidest  part  of  it  was  that 
I  was  obliged  to  say  the  same  to  my  fiancee  or  she 
would  have  been  worried  to  death.  She  made  me 
swear  to  be  careful  and  to  keep  my  life-belt  on  all  the 
time.  I  swore.  When  she  cries  I  don't  know  what  in 
the  world  to  do.  I  did  n't  tell  her  that  the  Pamir  has 
neither  wireless  nor  guns  and  is  n't  likely  to  have  them, 
and  that  if  we  run  into  a  submarine  all  we  can  do  is 
to  blow  on  it  to  see  if  it  will  sneeze.  As  I  stayed  only 
five  days  the  papers  were  not  ready  and  we  could  n't 
be  married.  We  have  decided  that  it  will  come  off 
next  time  even  if  I  get  only  forty-eight  hours'  leave. 
163 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

I  had  put  aside  fifteen  hundred  francs,  which  I  gave 
to  her,  and  she  will  arrange  everything,  furniture  and 
outfit,  to  install  us  in  a  little  house  two  or  three  hun- 
dred yards  from  her  parents.  Well,  old  man,  though 
it  was  hard  to  say  good-bye  at  the  station,  we  shall 
be  married  before  the  year  is  up,  I  hope.  Fourgues 
told  me  that  I  could  count  on  eight  days,  but  the  un- 
loading went  fast  at  Boucau  because  of  the  return  of 
fine  weather  and  I  received  a  telegram  the  fifth  day, 
ordering  me  to  report  at  Saint-Nazaire  in  a  hurry. 
The  Pamir  was  to  stop  there  in  two  days  and  would 
probably  sail  for  America.  I  was  rather  astonished 
at  the  destination  because  the  Pamir  has  the  habit 
now  of  rolling  around  Europe;  but  of  course  sailors 
must  be  ready  for  anything. 

Marguerite  stuffed  my  valise  full  of  preserves  and 
made  a  big  package  of  collars  and  handkerchiefs, 
socks  and  shirts.  She  embroidered  lovely  initials  on 
all  of  them  and  added  some  little  silk  pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs, some  colored  suspenders,  and  the  proper 
thing  in  neckties.  I'ma  regular  swell,  old  man. 
Villiers,  who  puts  in  all  his  spare  time  at  the  haber- 
dashers' collecting  multicolored  lingerie,  is  dying  of 
envy. 

I  could  n't  find  anybody  at  Saint-Nazaire;  only  a 
letter  at  the  company's  agency,  in  which  Fourgues 
told  me  to  report  at  Boulogne,  the  Pamir  having  been 
sent  there,  and  that  he  would  look  for  me  the  follow- 
ing Sunday.  You  can  imagine  how  stupid  I  felt  to 
have  run  away  from  La  Bochelle  without  having  had 

164 


ARRESTED  AT  NANTES  AND  IN  PARIS 

time  to  draw  a  long  breath  —  and  all  the  more  so  as 
it  only  made  forty  hours'  wait,  not  long  enough  for 
me  to  go  back.  So  I  stopped  a  day  in  Paris.  A  gen- 
darme arrested  me  in  the  station  at  Nantes  and  an- 
other in  the  subway  in  Paris,  to  find  out  about  my 
military  status.  I  was  in  civilian  dress.  If  I  had  only 
known,  I  should  have  made  the  entire  trip  in  the  com- 
pany's uniform,  for  every  one  in  France  looks  at  you 
askance  and  says  disagreeable  things  if  you  have  n't 
a  military  appearance. 

I  found  the  Pamir  at  Boulogne  in  the  Loubet 
dock,  taking  on  a  cargo  of  old  English  material  from 
the  French  front:  wagons,  guns,  automobiles,  hangars, 
and  old  iron,  to  be  repaired  in  England.  Fourgues 
explained  that  the  Pamir  should  have  gone  to  Amer- 
ica to  get  steel  bars  for  the  manufacture  of  shells  in 
France,  but  as  that  order  would  n't  be  ready  for  a 
month,  they  had  seized  the  opportunity  to  have  us 
potter  around  a  little  in  the  English  Channel.  As 
pottering  it  was  rather  important  work,  seeing  that 
we  made  two  trips  each  way  and  that  both  times  in 
England  we  took  on  from  two  hundred  to  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  brand-new  automobiles  and  motor- 
truck chassis  for  the  Flanders  front.  The  English 
are  beginning  to  get  under  way  seriously.  They 
have  taken  time,  but  it's  not  the  same  now  as  it 
was  when  we  were  there  during  the  first  year  of  the 
war.  I  don't  know  how  long  it 's  going  to  take  them 
to  train  their  new  army  and  to  make  soldiers  and 
officers,  but  as  far  as  the  material  goes,  there's  no 

165 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

question.  You  have  no  idea  of  the  traffic  between 
England  and  France.  It  is  coming  into  all  the  ports 
—  Calais,  Boulogne,  Fecamp,  Le  Treport,  Dieppe, 
Le  Havre,  Rouen,  Caen  —  without  counting  the 
little  ones.  They  are  all  crowded.  Barely  arrived 
in  England,  the  Pamir  is  tied  to  a  dock  and  they 
pull  out  her  junk  and  stuff  in  some  more.  It  still 
takes  longer  in  France,  although  that,  too,  is  a  little 
better  now  than  last  year.  Oh,  it's  not  ideal  yet, 
and  one  often  wonders  what  all  the  empty  boats  and 
cars  are  doing.  In  four  or  five  years,  maybe  the 
officials  and  the  bureaucrats  will  look  at  their 
watches  instead  of  piling  up  papers. 

At  last  we  got  off  for  Baltimore  with  some  dozens 
of  cases  of  French  exports  —  fabrics,  Parisian  arti- 
cles —  nothing  much.  When  I  think  that  the  Ger- 
mans continue  to  send  their  catalogues  and  mer- 
chandise over  the  whole  world  by  way  of  the  neutrals, 
and  that  the  three-thousand-ton  Pamir  was  sent  out 
with  scarcely  two  or  three  hundred  tons  of  cheap 
stuff,  it  seems  hardly  worth  while  to  talk  in  the 
papers  about  economizing.  This  little  Atlantic  trip 
will  have  cost  the  Princess  some  twenty-five  thou- 
sand francs,  a  part  of  which  she  ought  to  have  got- 
ten back.  And  it's  like  that  everywhere.  They  can 
get  ready  for  a  new  loan,  but  Fourgues  says  it's 
saving  the  centimes  and  throwing  the  billions  over- 
board. 

Villiers  and  Fourgues  have  spent  their  time  during 
the  voyage  rowing  at  table,  arguing  about  all  that  has 

166 


ARGUMENTS  ON  BOARD 

happened  during  the  last  two  or  three  months:  the 
Irish  rebellion,  the  retreat  in  Mesopotamia,  the  Jut- 
land affair,  and  the  death  of  Kitchener  —  without 
counting  affairs  at  home 


At  first  Fourgues  was  a  little  over- 
bearing toward  Villiers  because  he  believed  Villiers 
contradicted  him  just  to  see  him  go  up  in  the  air,  and 
two  or  three  times  he  told  Villiers  that  that  was 
enough,  there  was  no  need  of  going  on  in  that  tone. 
But  this  was  in  the  Mediterranean  when  Villiers  first 
came  on  board  with  his  neckties  and  his  white  hands. 
Now  that  he  has  put  the  engine  in  order  with  a  turn 
of  the  wrist,  and  now  that  everything  is  going  on 
rollers,  Fourgues  knows  that  he  can't  be  treated  that 
way  because  it 's  chic  to  have  an  officer  on  whom  one 
can  depend.  So  he  asks  Villiers'  advice  on  a  lot  of 
technical  matters.  But  when  it  comes  to  their  grand 
discussions  of  naval  questions  and  the  politics  of  the 
war,  they  jostle  each  other  like  rag-pickers.  At  bot- 
tom they  have  the  same  opinions  and  I  am  beginning 
to  believe  that  they  wrangle  for  amusement.  Villiers 
has  a  little  manner  of  arguing  in  a  calm  voice,  as 
though  he  were  afraid  of  disarranging  his  collar  or 
the  part  of  his  hair.  Fourgues  tries  to  keep  on  the 
same  level  and  says:  — 

"Eh  bien,  Villiers,  let's  talk  calmly.  We're  not  of 
the  same  opinion  but  it  will  do  this  boy  good  to  hear 
your  arguments." 

167 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

The  "boy"  is  II  Ever  since  Villiers  arrived, 
Fourgues  has  shoved  me  into  a  drawer  because  I  have 
n't  the  cheek  to  get  up  against  Villiers.  And  also  at 
present  Fourgues  has  a  grudge  against  me  for  not 
having  been  married  at  La  Rochelle.  He  says  that 
I  am  a  laggard  and  that  the  next  time  he  will  go  to 
La  Rochelle  with  me  and  march  me  straight  to  the 
mayor's  from  the  train.  If  that  will  get  me  back 
sooner,  I  won't  ask  for  anything  better! 

So,  then,  I  listen  without  being  obliged  to  take 
part.  When  Villiers  is  optimistic,  Fourgues  says  that 
everything  is  going  to  the  dogs.  When  Villiers  is 
pessimistic,  Fourgues  says  that  the  Allies  haven't 
made  a  single  mistake  and  that  as  the  Boches  have 
n't  got  us  yet,  we  have  hold  of  things  in  the  proper 
way  and  are  going  to  wade  right  into  them.  Only, 
he  says  all  this  with  a  roar  because  he  can't  hold  out 
more  than  five  minutes  in  the  face  of  Villiers'  im- 
passibility. 

I  believe  they  have  discussed  the  Jutland  affair 
at  every  meal,  trying  to  find  out  who  was  beaten, 
what  the  results  were,  etc.  Villiers  is  friendly  with  a 
lot  of  engineer  officers,  who,  like  himself,  passed 
through  the  Arts-et-Metiers  and  he  is  also  accus- 
tomed to  dealing  with  figures  and  is  very  exact.  He 
says  that  affairs  like  that  of  Jutland  make  a  noise  in 
the  newspapers  and  in  speeches,  but  that  at  bottom 
they  are  of  absolutely  no  use  whatsoever.  Fourgues 
is  for  hitting  at  the  Germans  every  time  there  is  a 
chance,  and  he  says  that  if  the  English  had  been  able 

168 


BATTLESHIP'S  ANCIENT  HISTORY 

to  demolish  the  entire  German  fleet  the  war  would 
be  well  along.  Villiers  maintains  that  this  is  not  true 
at  all,  that  even  if  the  big  German  ships  were  at  the 
bottom,  their  coasts  would  still  be  just  as  well  de- 
fended by  guns,  mines,  submarines,  and  Zeppelins, 
and  that  the  English  could  not  get  any  nearer  than 
now;  he  also  says  that  if  the  Germans  had  lost  all 
their  big  ships,  under-sea  warfare  would  not  be 
changed  one  iota  and  that  the  submarines  would  give 
us  just  as  much  trouble.  Battleships,  he  says,  are  as 
much  ancient  history  as  muzzle-loading  cannon;  in 
the  future  there  won't  be  anything  but  submarines, 
mines,  and  light  boats  to  carry  on  the  real  work,  as 
this  war  has  demonstrated 


Although  this  is  somewhat  Fourgues'  opinion,  as  I 
know,  he  replies  —  just  to  be  obstinate  —  that  as 
long  as  one  side  builds  big  ships,  the  other  is  obliged 
to.  But  Villiers  is  not  downed.  He  asks  by  what 
means  the  Gambetta,  the  Ocean,  the  Cressy,  the 
Hogue,  the  Aboukir,  the  Bouvet,  the  Hampshire, 
and  all  the  other  big  ships  were  sunk  ?  Not  by  great 
vessels,  but  by  torpedoes  which  cost  twenty  thou- 
sand francs  at  most,  but  which  can  send  battleships 
costing  fifty  millions  and  more  to  the  bottom.  So  if 
for  each  ship  worth  fifty  millions,  twenty-five  sub- 
marine torpedo-boats  or  mine-layers  were  built,  the 
Allies  would  have  a  thousand,  perhaps,  and  the 
Germans,  with  all  the  dreadnoughts  in  the  world, 
169 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

would  not  dare  put  their  noses  out  of  doors.  But 
inversely,  if  the  Germans  had  five  hundred  or  a  thou- 
sand submarines  instead  of  big  ships,  they  would 
make  life  impossible  at  sea.  As  they  are  not  people 
who  keep  on  going  in  the  wrong  direction,  they  have 
quickly  seen  that  submarines  and  mines  are  the 
maritime  weapons  and  are  going  to  turn  them  out 
like  little  pies.  Fourgues  repeated  this  conversation 
to  me  so  often  that  I  knew  Villiers  had  shut  him  up 
completely,  but  he  wanted  to  quibble,  so  one  evening 
Villiers  said  to  him:  "To-morrow  I'm  going  to  bring 
you  an  estimate  of  the  cost  of  the  battle  of  Jutland 
according  to  official  accounts  in  England  at  the  time 
we  left,  and  you  will  see  if  it's  worth  while  to  build 
big  ships." 

He  came  to  luncheon  next  day  with  his  topo  and 
Fourgues  took  it  all  back.  Villiers  gave  me  permis- 
sion to  make  a  copy  to  send  you.  He  brought  all  the 
figures  up  to  date  with  the  latest  information  received 
in  America  and  you  simply  can't  get  out  of  it  —  it's 
statistics.  The  topo  follows.  I  shall  copy  it  for  you 
just  as  he  has  it  arranged:  — 

COST  OF  THE  BATTLE  OF  JUTLAND 

The  sum-total  of  the  money  lost  in  the  battle  of  Jutland 
can  be  divided  into  five  parts:  — 

i.  English  and  German  ships  sunk; 

2.  Repairs  of  damaged  ships; 

3.  Cost  of  artillery; 

4.  Cost  of  coal  and  extras; 

5.  Capital  represented  by  the  men  drowned  and  the  pen- 

sions paid  to  their  dependents. 

170 


COST  OF  THE  BATTLE  OF  JUTLAND 

I.  Sunken  Ships 
German 

francs 

Derfflinger 60  million 

Ltitzow 60  ** 

Kaiser 60  " 

Hindenburg 60  " 

Pommern 3o  " 

Elbing 10  " 

Wiesbaden 10  " 

Rostock 10  " 

Frauenlob 6  " 

Nine  destroyers  (in  all)  about . .  27  ** 

One  submarine 2  " 

German  total 335  million 

English 

Invincible 5o  million 

Indefatigable 5o  " 

Queen  Mary 60  " 

Black  Prince 3o  " 

Warrior 3o  " 

Defence 35  " 

Eight  light  vessels  (in  all)  about  25  " 

English  total 280  million 

Total  of  all  ships  sunk 6i5  million 

II.  Repairs  of  Damaged  Ships 

The  number  of  ships  damaged  is  much  superior  to  that 
of  ships  destroyed.  Some  are  certainly  no  longer  availa- 
ble and  represent  a  dead  loss.  It  is  impossible  to  determine 
the  cost  of  the  repair  of  the  others,  but  one  cannot  be  far 
from  the  truth  in  estimating  under  this  head  almost  a 
third  of  what  comes  under  the  head  of  total  destruction, 
or  about  200  million,  which,  added  to  the  first  total, 
makes  about  800  million. 

III.  Cost  of  Artillery 

There  were  about  fifty  big  ships  engaged  in  the  battle, 
armed  with  guns  of  3o5,  34o,  or  38o,  in  varying  numbers. 
Admitting  the  average  number  per  ship  to  be  ten  guns 

171 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

firing  two  shots  a  minute  at  an  average  rate  of  3ooo 
francs  a  shot,  we  have:  5o  x  10  x  2  x  3ooo=  3  million  francs 
a  minute.  Summing  up  the  minutes  of  firing  and  admitting 
45  as  the  total,  we  have  3  x  45=  i35  million  francs.  Add- 
ing the  fire  of  the  secondary  batteries,  and  guns  which 
burst  or  which  must  be  changed,  the  total  for  the  artil- 
lery can  be  given  as  about  i5o  million,  which,  added  to 
the  others,  makes  a5o  million. 

IV.   Cost  of  Coal  and  Extras 

A  big  ship  going  at  top  speed  burns  about  1000  tons  a 
day  at  5o  francs  a  ton  (if  not  more),  making  5o,ooo  francs 
a  day.  Admitting  the  total  of  the  operations  at  top  speed 
and  with  active  fires  to  have  lasted  at  least  one  day,  put 
down  two  and  a  half  million  for  the  big  ships  alone.  Add- 
ing the  coal  for  the  smaller  boats  will  bring  it  up  to  three 
million.  The  wear  and  tear  of  boilers,  dynamos,  and 
other  machinery,  belonging  to  the  damages  of  the  battle, 
would  make  this  mount  up  to  20  million,  which,  added  to 
the  preceding  o5o  and  rounding  it  out  with  things  not  ac- 
counted for,  would  constitute  a  total  of  about  one  billion 
for  the  material  alone. 

V.  Capital  Represented  by  the  Personnel 

Certain  ships  had  only  one  or  a  few  men  saved.  The 
total  number  of  dead  certainly  exceeds  10,000  men.  There 
were  also  many  wounded,  some  definitively,  others  only 
partly  crippled.  Admitting  a  total  of  20,000  persons  for 
whom  the  State  must  pay  pensions,  either  to  them  or  to 
their  dependants,  and  taking  an  average  of  10,000  francs 
for  the  annual  pension,  we  reach  20  millions  of  annual 
arrears  at  five  per  cent,  representing  an  immobilized 
capital  of  4oo  million  francs.  It  is  impossible  to  appreciate 
the  intrinsic  value  represented  by  these  10,000  killed  and 
10,000  wounded,  all  taken  from  among  the  most  fit  of 
both  nations,  nor  the  ruin  brought  by  their  death  to  their 
families.  But  it  is  not  far  from  the  truth  to  put  5oo  mil- 
lion as  the  total  of  the  human  loss,  which,  added  to  the 
preceding  billion,  makes  the  cost  of  the  few  hours  of  the 
battle  of  Jutland  about  1  billion  5oo  million  francs. 

So  there  you  have  Villiers'  topo.    As  to  its  form, 
Fourgues  wished  to  quibble  over  every  article,  but 

172 


THE  FUTILITY  OF  IT 

Villiers  was  firm  because  he  had  made  his  calcula- 
tions according  to  some  technical  reviews  he  got  in 
France  and  England  and  he  said  the  actual  figures 
would  be  more.  Ships  always  cost  more  than  is  offi- 
cially stated  and  in  time  of  war,  coal,  shells,  and  the 
rest  go  up  from  week  to  week,  and,  he  said,  it  was 
very  nice  of  him  to  have  taken  5  per  cent  instead  of 
9  per  cent  for  the  pensions. 

"Moreover,  captain,  it's  not  a  question  of  wran- 
gling over  a  hundred  millions  more  or  less.  Take  any 
sum  between  one  and  two  billions.  Do  you  mean  to 
tell  me  that  it  advanced  the  war  so  much  as  a  quarter 
of  a  second?" 

"  But  if  they  could  have  overwhelmed  the  Boches 
and  made  a  mess  of  their  fleet  — " 

"That  would  have  cost  three  or  four  or  five  billions 
because  the  English  would  have  lost  as  well,  and  what 
then?" 

"Then  the  English  would  only  have  to  go  back  to 
port  and  warm  their  feet  instead  of  being  on  the 
qui-vive  all  the  time,  leading  a  dog's  life  on  account 
of  the  big  German  ships." 

"That's  just  what  I  wanted  to  make  you  say, 
captain.  I  give  you  every  advantage.  I  admit  that 
the  German  fleet  would  be  destroyed.  But  would 
that  diminish  by  one  the  number  of  their  submarines  ? 
Would  their  mines,  batteries,  or  torpedoes  hinder  us 
any  the  less  from  approaching  their  coast  ?  Should 
we  have  one  more  merchant  vessel  on  the  sea  or  one 
less  sunk?" 

173 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

"Yes,  yes;  but  as  long  as  they  have  big  ships  we 
have  to  have  others  to  match." 

"I  don't  agree  with  you.  It  would  be  sufficient  for 
us  to  have  hundreds  of  submarines  in  order  to  keep 
them  from  getting  out  and  to  hunt  them  down,  as 
they  do  us." 

"But  then  their  battleships  would  sink  our  car- 
goes." 

"Where  have  you  seen  battleships  carrying  on  a 
warfare  of  pursuit  ?  They  are  too  delicate:  they  can't 
take  coal  enough  to  keep  at  sea  for  long.  Only  light 
boats  or  submarines  can  war  on  traffic." 

"Well,  what  are  you  aiming  at?" 

"This:  that  the  big  ships  are  of  no  use  any  more 
except  to  spend  billions  in  a  few  hours  without  any 
one  being  the  better  or  the  worse.  That  seems  clear  to 
me.  Whereas  a  good  submarine  costing  two  million 
francs  would  carry  six  or  eight  torpedoes,  would  have 
guns,  and  could  sink  her  eight  or  ten  cargoes  a  month 
if  lucky.  Even  if  the  submarine  is  lost,  something  has 
been  accomplished  if  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  tons 
of  wheat,  coal,  steel,  or  rubber  are  at  the  bottom. 
That's  what  would  annoy  the  enemy!  It  would  make 
less  noise  in  the  newspapers,  but  it's  the  real  work  of 
the  war.  In  this  war  the  victory  will  be  to  the  one 
who  can  do  the  most  damage  to  the  other  in  the  short- 
est time.  It's  always  like  that  and  why  have  n't  we 
seen  it  this  time?" 

I  shall  never  finish  telling  you  their  palavers  on  this 
subject.  There  is  something  in  it  —  the  question  is 

174 


WATER  IN  THE  HOLD 

worth  discussing.  I  should  be  much  pleased  if  you 
would  fabricate  an  article  for  me  on  your  way  of 
thinking.  Maybe  you,  who  are  on  a  dreadnought, 
think  it  rather  raw  of  me  to  write  you  things  vilify- 
ing your  side ;  but  there  does  n't  have  to  be  any  pre- 
tence between  us  two.  Honestly,  I  expect  an  answer. 

Naples,  September  23 
Dear  Old  Man,  — 

Since  my  last  the  Pamir  has  made  Baltimore, 
New  York,  Brest,  Cardiff,  Genoa,  and  Naples.  We 
haven't  lost  any  time,  you  see.  We  almost  went 
back  to  America  to  carry  steel  and  shells  again,  but 
at  the  last  moment  we  were  designated  for  the  pro- 
visioning of  Italy.  So  here  we  are  under  Vesuvius, 
and  there's  nothing  left  for  us  now  but  to  die,  as  the 
saying  is.  But  I  am  not  anxious  to  do  that,  for 
Fourgues  has  just  written  a  strong  letter  to  the  com- 
pany saying  that  the  Pamir  has  needed  to  go  into  dry- 
dock  ever  since  she  has  been  knocking  about,  and  now 
all  the  more  so,  as  we  hit  something  hard  off  the  coast 
of  England  and  he  wants  to  know  what  happened. 
We  get  water  in  the  hold  to  the  tune  of  about  a  foot 
a  day  and  have  to  keep  pumping  all  the  time.  I  hope 
we  are  going  back  to  France  to  be  careened.  As  that 
will  take  eight  or  ten  days,  Fourgues  has  promised 
that  I  shall  be  free  for  the  mayor  and  the  church.  So 
there's  something  good.  We  didn't  take  our  steel 
from  Baltimore  after  all.  It  hadn't  arrived.  Just 
rely  on  the  Boches  to  get  up  strikes  in  factories,  ac- 
175 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

cidents  on  railroads,  and  cars  gone  astray!  Anyway, 
Fourgues  learned,  knocking  around  here  and  there, 
—  but  not  from  the  consular  authorities,  —  that, 
although  there  was  no  steel  for  us  at  Baltimore,  there 
was  heaps  of  it  in  New  York  rusting  on  the  docks, 
waiting  for  some  one  to  take  it.  So  he  picked  up  and 
went  and  the  Pamir  anchored  near  Brooklyn  Bridge 
and  we  took  in  three  thousand  tons  of  steel  and  some 
extra  piled  on  the  deck.  Of  course,  Fourgues  did  n't 
go  at  it  with  the  back  of  the  spoon  and  only  regretted 
that  he  couldn't  carry  ten  thousand  tons.  The 
Pamir  was  down  in  the  water  to  her  hawse-holes  and 
crawled  like  a  tortoise  in  a  nasty  summer  sea.  It 
was  n't  like  being  in  an  opera-glass  case,  but  we 
did  n't  give  a  hang  because  this  time  we  were  of  some 
use. 

In  New  York,  during  a  tack  he  made  up  Broadway 
and  in  the  swell  district  with  Villiers,  Fourgues  ran 
into  old  Flannigan.  I  told  you  about  meeting  him  in 
Norway  last  year.  They  all  came  on  board  in  the 
middle  of  the  night,  a  dark  brown  taste  in  their 
mouths,  making  noise  enough  to  wake  a  cemetery, 
carrying  a  gramophone  they  had  pinched  in  a  bar. 
They  set  to  playing  cake-walks  and  negro  melodies 
on  the  disks  which  they  had  also  taken,  and  I  got  up 
at  two  o'clock  because  sleep  was  no  longer  possible. 
As  Flannigan  was  to  leave  the  next  morning  for  the 
Scandinavian  countries,  and  as  he  said  he  was  going 
to  make  a  trip  in  Bochie,  he  stayed  on  board  until 
six  or  seven,  drinking  Dubonnet  and  seltzer  to  furbish 

176 


FLANNIGAN'S  STORIES  FROM  GERMANY 

up  his  palate  and  relating  his  campaigns  to  Fourgues 
and  Villiers,  who  poured  down  quarts  and  quarts  of 
Vichy  to  wash  out  all  the  drugs  they  had  just  put  into 
their  stomachs. 

Flannigan  denies  it,  but  we  are  sure  that  he  has 
already  been  in  Germany  and  that  it's  not  from  a 
great  distance  that  he  learns  all  he  tells.  But,  of 
course,  there's  no  way  of  proving  it  with  a  neutral 
as  long  as  the  official  policy  of  the  Entente  is  to  let 
the  Boches  carry  on  their  little  intrigues  while  the 
papers  say  the  blockade  is  perfect,  and  that  the  Ger- 
mans are  tightening  their  belts,  and  that  to-morrow 
they  are  going  to  come  out  crying  "Kamerad"  with 
their  mouths  open  so  we  can  put  in  a  crust.  That's 
not  Flannigan's  opinion,  nor  ours  either,  nor  that  of 
any  one  in  traffic.  But  I'll  go  on  with  what  Flan- 
nigan said:  — 

"The  Boches  are  not  eating  as  much  as  before, 
that's  certain,  but  everybody  knows  they  still  eat 
too  much,  and  a  lot  of  good  things  to  eat  are  allowed 
to  get  in  by  way  of  Switzerland,  Holland,  and  the 
Scandinavian  countries. 

"The  land  is  also  still  there.  It  produces  less  be- 
cause the  able  men  are  at  the  front,  but  even  if  it 
produced  only  half  as  much  as  formerly,  there  would 
still  be  no  famine.  The  Germans  make  music  about 
it  for  the  benefit  of  foreigners,  but  they  are  perfectly 
tranquil,  and  they  know  that  England  has  only  two 
tenths  of  her  territory  under  cultivation  for  food,  and 
that  if  her  provisions  are  cut  off,  she  is  the  one  who 
177 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

will  tighten  her  belt.  They  also  know  that  they  have 
torn  the  best  coal-mines  from  France  and  Russia; 
that  Italy,  Russia,  and  France  depend  on  what  is 
sent  to  them  by  sea.  To  meet  that  situation  the 
Boches  are  preparing  something  decisive  in  the  way 
of  submarine  warfare.  In  191 5  they  established  a  pro- 
gramme of  construction,  and  when  that  programme 
is  executed  they  will  declare  submarine  war  to  the 
death.  As  they  had  only  twenty  or  thirty  submarines 
at  the  declaration  of  war,  they  were  not  ready  then 
for  submarine  fighting,  but  they  can  be  relied  on  not 
to  have  neglected  the  idea  in  advance  if  they  believed 
it  worth  while. 

"As  they  soon  saw  that  it  was  their  best  chance, 
they  went  to  work  with  determination,  and  submarines 
are  now  being  turned  out.  They  will  be  armed  with 
big  guns,  will  run  faster  than  cargo  boats,  and  can 
stay  out  twenty  or  thirty  days  without  difficulty. 
There  will  be  others  for  mine-laying,  to  sow  all  the 
good  routes  with  mines.  All  will  be  able  to  cut  nets 
and  to  rest  on  the  bottom." 

Flannigan  says  this  is  current  conversation  in  Ger- 
many, and  that  even  if  the  official  people  in  France 
and  England  don't  believe  what  they  say  publicly, 
—  that  is,  that  it's  all  bluff,  —  they  had  better  get 
ready  for  something  nasty,  for  when  the  Germans 
once  let  loose  they  will  go  it  as  hard  as  they  did  when 
they  let  loose  on  land.  Flannigan  embroidered  this 
theme  for  three  or  four  hours  and  I  can't  remember 
all  the  figures  he  gave.  Villiers  wrote  down  some  at 

178 


A  PASSENGER  FROM  NEW  YORK 

the  time  to  pass  on  to  pals  in  France,  which  will  be 
of  no  use  in  the  world,  he  says,  as  the  order  of  the 
day  is  to  say  that  there  are  n't  any  submarines. 

The  Pamir  left  New  York  the  same  day  that 
Flannigan  sailed.  We  took  a  fellow  on  there,  a  civil 
engineer  who  had  gone  over  to  America  to  take  charge 
of  orders  for  munitions,  steel,  etc.,  and  who  seized 
the  chance  to  accompany  the  steel  bars  he  had  been 
inspecting  in  the  factory.  His  name  is  Mousseaux. 
He  had  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  sea  before  the 
war,  but  has  now  made  several  voyages,  to  Serbia, 
Russia,  Spain,  and  America,  so  is  not  altogether  an 
elephant.  He  told  us  a  lot  of  stories  about  muni- 
tions, the  markets,  orders,  and  the  Boches,  and  I 
opine  that  Mousseaux  also  thinks  that  if  we  win  a 
victory  it  won't  be  by  turning  our  backs.  He's  a 
sharp  one,  a  big,  blond,  blue-eyed  Norman.  In  short, 
a  sturdy  fellow. 

He  rather  went  up  in  the  air  when  he  saw  that  the 
Pamir  had  neither  wireless,  guns,  nor  anything  else 
against  submarines.  But  as  he  had  telegraphed  from 
inland  that  he  would  take  passage  with  us  and  as  he 
arrived  the  morning  we  sailed,  he  wouldn't  back 
out,  but  swallowed  the  pill,  especially  as  he  was  going 
to  gain  four  or  five  days  thereby.  Ships  don't  go  as 
you  please  to  France  at  present.  Moreover,  it  was  his 
twelfth  voyage  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  he 
had  been  on  boats  without  wireless  or  guns  eight 
times.  Like  all  those  who  roll  around  at  sea,  he 
thinks  as  we  do,  and  we  soon  agreed  that  the  mer- 
179 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

chant  marine  of  the  Allies  is  almost  offered  at  present 
to  the  Boche  submarines  and  that  it  will  last  as  long 
as  it  lasts.  He,  an  engineer,  assures  us  that  the  cost 
of  installing  wireless  on  all  the  boats  would  be  slight 
and  that  the  price  of  one  big  well-loaded  bark,  sunk 
because  it  had  no  warning,  would  cover  the  cost  of 
wireless  for  at  least  a  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hun- 
dred cargoes.  Mousseaux  adds  that  some  one  with  a 
hard  fist  is  needed  to  compel  the  owners  and  admin- 
istrators of  the  merchant  marine  and  everybody  else 
to  get  together  and  that  then  it  would  take  only 
about  a  month.  But  now  no  one  dares  go  ahead  and 
it's  going  to  cost  the  country  tens  of  millions. 

Fourgues  and  Mousseaux  almost  fell  out  when 
Mousseaux  asked  what  it  meant  to  put  guns  aft 
and  none  forward  on  the  cargo  boats  that  had  them. 
Fourgues  asked  him  what  he  meant  by  that. 

"Yes,"  answered  Mousseaux,  "I  have  been  on 
several  boats  which  had  one  gun  —  behind." 

"Dame!"  said  Fourgues;  "they  couldn't  have 
asked  the  advice  of  the  captain.  But  if  they  ever  give 
me  a  gun,  I  suppose  it  will  be  surrounded  by  a  lot  of 
fellows  from  the  navy  who  will  put  it  aft  because  the 
policy  of  the  Entente  is  to  be  on  the  defensive  as  re- 
gards submarines." 

"  But,  captain,  the  only  way  to  demolish  them  is  to 
attack  —  go  straight  for  them  the  moment  you 
meet  them." 

"That's  your  idea  and  we  all  think  so  too.  Please 
tell  that  in  Paris  to  whomever  it  may  concern.  You  '11 

180 


WHAT  MERCHANT  SHIPS  NEED 

make  one  more  to  be  told  to  shut  up  about  something 
that  concerns  him,  for  the  password  is  to  run  away  — 
yes,  sir  —  to  run  away  —  at  sight  —  and  to  fire  from 
behind  if  one  has  time.  As  for  attacking  —  strictly 
forbidden,  not  on  the  programme!" 

"  But,  captain,  how  can  we  say  that  we  have  the 
mastery  of  the  sea  if  our  ships  must  run  and  never 
show  fight?" 

"Yes,  how  can  we?  I  ask  you  the  same  question! 
They  cram  millions  of  tons  of  merchandise  into  us, 
saying,  'Carry  it  to  Europe;  you  have  nothing  to 
fear!'  Every  day  we  learn  of  a  comrade  who  has 
drunk  the  bouillon,  but  it  seems  that  he  did  n't  count, 
and  if  we  are  lucky  enough  to  meet  a  submarine,  we 
must  n't  hurt  it.  Leave  it  alone  or  turn  your  backs, 
like  des  jean-foutres  ! 

"And  if  we  get  a  dose  of  their  medicine?  Look  at 
my  masts  —  we  have  n't  even  four  wires  to  send  a 
radio  to  comrades  in  the  same  latitude!  It  would  n't 
give  any  one  meningitis  to  discover  what  merchant 
ships  need!  The  syndicate  of  captains  is  asking  for 
it  in  every  tone  of  voice  and  it 's  as  plain  as  the  nose 
on  your  face!  But  everybody  knows  that  we  won't 
go  on  strike,  and  the  big  vegetables  either  say  that 
we  are  regular  dare-devils  or  else  that  we  are  rebels. 
So  it's  go  ahead  or  give  up,  and  we  go  ahead  —  and 
every  one  of  us  knows  that  he's  going  down  when 
his  turn  comes." 

"And  it's  all  the  worse,  captain,  —  though  I  don't 
wish  to  criticise  the  merchant  marine,  —  because 
181 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  passengers  are  sure  to  be  drowned  if  the  ships  are 
torpedoed.  On  the  Pamir  you  have  two  lifeboats, 
which  might  be  enough  for  your  forty  men.  But  I 
have  crossed  on  ships  with  a  thousand  or  twelve  hun- 
dred in  the  crew  and  no  means  of  saving  but  four  or 
five  hundred.  As  a  rule,  half  the  lifeboats  —  all  those 
on  the  side  which  goes  up  in  the  air  after  the  torpedo- 
ing —  are  of  no  use;  so  you  can  see  that  it  takes  cour- 
age to  go  to  sea  and  that  it's  folly  to  send  whole  regi- 
ments without  protection.  After  so  many  months  of 
war  the  civilians  still  find  it  amusing.  If  things  were 
like  that  on  land,  the  parliaments  or  the  newspapers 
would  have  had  them  changed  long  ago.  But,  know- 
ing nothing  of  seafaring,  the  country  swallows  any 
story  it's  told.  And  you're  in  luck  that  it  doesn't 
know  anything." 

"  Thunder  and  blazes  I "  answered  Fourgues.  "  You 
call  that  luck  ?  It  means  breaking  your  head  against 
the  compass!  It's  worse  than  you  think.  After  all, 
I  don't  give  a  damn;  we're  among  friends  and  can 
speak  plainly.  Do  you  believe  that  the  navy  has  yet 
given  orders  for  information  to  be  posted  up  on  trans- 
ports, telling  passengers  what  to  do  in  case  of  sub- 
marines ?  No  ?  They  take  passage  like  sheep,  carrying 
the  latest  newspaper  saying  that  it's  a  joke.  And 
when  they  are  torpedoed,  it's  butchery,  sir,  it's  mas- 
sacre; and  there's  nothing  to  say  because  if  it's  that 
way,  it's  because  that's  the  way  they  want  it!  And 
what  do  you  expect  them  to  do,  these  hundreds  of 
elephants,  when  the  ship  begins  to  rock  ?  No  one  has 

182 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE  CREWS 

told  them  anything.  They  don't  know  anything. 
They  run  around,  braying  like  asses,  jumping  into 
lifeboats,  cutting  ropes  —  and  the  drowned  are 
charged  up  to  profit  and  loss!  If  a  single  general 
treated  our  soldiers  like  that,  he  would  be  sent  to 
Limoges  first  and  then  court-martialled." 

Do  you  take  in  Fourgues'  tone  ?  As  a  rule  we  don't 
occupy  ourselves  on  the  Pamir  with  land  affairs  and 
politics.  The  sea  is  enough  for  us.  We  know  that 
we  are  being  surrounded  from  day  to  day  and  that 
it  comes  closer  with  each  voyage,  but  we  can  say 
nothing,  do  nothing.  That's  forbidden! . . .  Oh,  I  for- 
got something  that  Flannigan  told  us  in  New  York 
about  the  crews  of  the  German  submarines.  The 
newspapers  and  the  French  authorities  say  that  the 
good  German  crews  have  long  since  been  destroyed 
and  that  submarine  crews  can't  be  turned  out  in  a 
day  like  waffles,  so  we  can  be  tranquil  on  that  score. 
Flannigan  says  that's  all  humbug.  In  the  first  place, 
with  money  one  can  get  what  one  wants  in  any  coun- 
try and  the  Germans  pay  their  submarine  crews 
royally.  And  then  everybody  knows  that  there  are 
only  two  fellows  who  have  to  understand  the  whole 
business  —  the  captain  and  the  mate  who  have  charge 
of  the  submersing  and  steering.  As  to  the  crew,  they 
have  their  posts  as  mechanics  with  the  fly-wheels, 
levers,  and  valves,  just  as  in  any  factory,  and  merely 
execute  the  orders  of  the  two  heads  —  turn  the  one 
at  the  right,  empty  the  one  at  the  left,  drive  ahead  in 
the  centre.  It  would  n't  take  forever  to  learn  that! 
183 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Any  mechanic  would  be  up  on  it  in  a  month  and 
so  they  have  fine  crews  like  those  on  the  Zeppelins. 
There's  only  the  risk.  But  I'd  like  to  know  in  what 
country  danger  stops  the  fellows  with  nerve  ?  Neither 
in  France  nor  in  Bochie  !  Moreover,  Flannigan  said, 
after  the  submarine  crews  have  drudged  for  fifteen 
or  twenty  days  at  sea,  they  are  given  leave  in  port 
and  spend  a  week  or  two  with  their  families  while  the 
machinery  is  put  in  order  by  others.  And  they  are 
treated  like  heroes  and  feted  everywhere,  as  well  as 
given  their  part  in  the  prize-money  and  for  the  de- 
struction, so  that  candidates  are  refused,  just  as  in 
the  French  aviation  service  —  where,  of  course,  you 
may  break  your  head,  but  only  after  having  had  a 
chance  at  the  enemy. 

And  Flannigan  also  said  that  the  German  admiralty 
does  n't  restrict  the  submarine  commanders  on  the 
pretext  that  they  are  young.  It  drops  the  reins  on 
their  necks,  sends  them  out  with  full  power  and 
does  n't  bother  any  more  about  what  they  do  nor 
about  the  papers  they  make  out.  Well,  we  can  ex- 
pect something  dirty!  If  a  quarter  of  that  were  done 
for  the  French,  I  believe  we  could  hook  the  moon. 

At  Brest  our  steel  was  not  unloaded  very  fast,  but 
that's  the  rule.  And  what  a  chic  harbor  I  It  would 
hold  all  the  boats  of  Europe  and  America  and  as  it's 
the  nearest  to  the  United  States,  from  twelve  to 
twenty-four  hours  could  be  saved  on  all  transat- 
lantic voyages.  Fourgues  pretends  that  it  takes  the 
French  not  to  use  such  a  port.  It's  because  we  are 

184 


THE  PAMIR  STRIKES  SOMETHING 

too  rich,  he  says.  If  the  Germans  or  the  English  or 
the  Yankees  had  Brest,  they  would  make  the  first 
transatlantic  port  of  the  world  out  of  it,  surpassing 
Hamburg,  Rotterdam,  London,  Liverpool,  and  New 
York  all  together.  But  the  navy  does  n't  wish  this, 
so  the  Atlantic  freight  and  our  good  money  go  else- 
where. 

At  Brest  there  were  a  lot  of  boats  starting  for  Arch- 
angel with  material  which  will  probably  get  lost  in 
Manchuria  or  Thibet.  Flannigan  told  us  how  the 
Czar  is  surrounded  with  a  whole  clique  who  are  at 
work  for  the  Boches.  Fourgues  would  have  liked  to 
have  the  Pamir  make  the  little  Russian  trip  of  last 
year  all  over  again,  but  they  sent  us  to  Cardiff  with 
orders  to  get  coal  and  we  sailed  in  ballast  according 
to  custom.  It  annoys  Fourgues  now  to  carry  coal  as 
it's  some  time  since  the  Pamir  has  carried  any  but 
clean  cargoes,  but  we  knew  why  it  was  Cardiff — the 
owner  is  back  of  that.  I  understand  that  nowadays 
there's  a  profit  in  coal  and  the  Pamir  will  have  paid 
for  herself  with  this  voyage.  She  can  sink  now! 
Fourgues  and  I,  having  done  our  utmost  —  the  owner 
can  offer  us  cigars  at  a  franc  apiece! 

We  almost  did  get  sunk  off  Sallys  on  leaving 
Cardiff  for  Genoa.  It  was  between  two  and  three  in 
the  afternoon,  during  Fourgues'  watch.  The  Pamir 
struck  something  which  shook  her  from  the  keel  to 
the  masthead,  but  whatever  it  was,  it  didn't  ex- 
plode. Perhaps  it  was  a  submarine  which  suddenly 
knew  the  worst!  Or  perhaps  a  mine  that  did  n't  go 
185 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

off.  Nothing  happened  to  us  except  that  we  have 
forty  tons  of  water  a  day  in  the  hold  and  must  keep 
the  pump  going  all  the  time.  As  we  still  have  coal 
on  board  I  can't  tell  you  what's  the  matter,  but  it's 
serious.  Fourgues  and  Villiers  think  that  we  can 
keep  on  to  France  in  order  to  get  into  dock  there,  but 
day  after  to-morrow  when  we  empty  out  our  coal,  we 
shall  know  what  has  been  smashed.  From  Cardiff  to 
Genoa  it  rained  cats  and  dogs  the  entire  time.  Never 
have  we  had  such  a  wet  passage.  Good  weather  in 
other  respects.  Not  a  single  patrol-boat  except  at 
Gibraltar.  We  are  n't  astonished  to  find  no  patrol- 
boats,  but  it's  false  to  say  that  the  routes  are 
guarded. 

At  Genoa  we  loafed  around  for  four  days.  There 
was  a  mistake  regarding  the  destination  of  the  coal, 
which  was  for  factories  at  Naples  and  Rome.  Visited 
the  city  and  vicinity.  They  don't  worry  in  Italy.  At 
bottom,  old  man,  France  is  the  only  country  that 
is  really  getting  it  in  this  war  —  in  men,  territory, 
money,  and  effort. 

We  cleared  from  Genoa  for  Naples,  where  they  are 
worrying  even  less.  It's  not  mentioned,  but  there  are 
several  classes  not  yet  mobilized.  Of  course  it's  none 
of  my  business.  I  am  at  home  in  the  merchant  marine, 
but  when  it  comes  to  other  things,  perhaps  I  'm  ab- 
surd. We  anchored  in  the  port,  between  two  war- 
ships which  are  not  in  the  Strait  of  Otranto.  Our  coal 
was  unloaded  so-so. 

To  speak  of  other  matters,  they  say  that  Rumania 
186 


THE  WEDDING 

is  going  to  get  into  the  game  and  there  is  talk  of 
Italy  declaring  war  on  Germany.  Fourgues  says 
that  means  at  least  six  months  more  of  war.  Alors 
quoiy  the  more  Allies  there  are,  the  longer  it  will 
last?..  . 

Upon  which,  old  man,  I  shake  your  hand.  Villiers 
and  Fourgues  are  going  to  take  me  to  a  music-hall 
in  Tobdo  Street  this  evening  to  see  if  I  am  a  real  fire- 
proof fiance,  as  they  call  it.  I  shall  be  awfully  bored. 
If  we  go  into  dry-dock  at  home,  I  will  send  you  a 
telegram  by  way  of  the  Navy  Department  and  if 
the  Auvergne  is  in  France,  come  to  La  Rochelle 
right  away  so  I  can  embrace  you  the  first  after  my 
wife. 

Marseilles,  October,  1916 
My  Old  Pal,  — 

Happy  people  have  no  history.  You  have  left 
for  Argostoli  or  Piraeus  and  I  received  your  telegram 
on  my  wedding-day.  My  wife,  who  is  with  me  at 
Marseilles,  sends  you  warm  greetings  with  her  re- 
grets that  you  were  not  there.  Fourgues  came.  He 
made  a  little  speech  which  fairly  doubled  us  up 
and  presented  me  with  a  fine  lamp  of  wrought-iron. 
Villiers  gave  me  a  love  of  a  narghile  with  two  tubes, 
to  soothe  my  wife  and  me  if  we  quarrel.  I  thank  you 
for  the  present  which  you  say  is  coming.  The  Pamir 
is  in  dock  and  will  be  ready  in  four  or  five  days.  Au 
revoir,  old  man.  I  am  as  happy  as  a  king  and  I  hope 
the  same  for  you  when  your  turn  comes. 
187 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Marseilles,  October  3o,  1916 

My  dear  Friend,  — 

My  wife  left  yesterday  for  La  Rochelle,  as 
the  Pamir  was  to  have  quitted  Marseilles  yesterday 
evening.  But  we  were  delayed,  Fourgues  having  been 
mistaken  about  the  cargo.  So  I  am  writing  again, 
having  sent  you  a  little  letter  and  having  received  a 
long  one  from  you.  I  don't  want  to  seem  to  preach, 
but  —  get  married!  Find  a  woman  you  like  and  then 
go  right  ahead  with  your  eyes  shut.  Take  my  word 
for  it,  for  fellows  like  us,  who  have  a  different  lot  from 
these  sheltered  land-lubbers,  it's  a  revelation  and  the 
true  happiness.  I  am  no  longer  the  same,  and  this  is 
not  an  exaggeration.  If  it  were  otherwise  I  should  tell 
you.  But  my  heart  is  wrung  because  Marguerite  left 
yesterday  and  because  the  Pamir  must  get  under 
way  so  soon.  To  have  a  young  girl  all  for  yourself,  to 
listen  to  the  things  she  says,  that  no  one  has  ever 
heard  before,  and  then  to  go  away  to  sea  —  it's 
something  that  can't  be  described. 

Add  to  this  the  war  and  the  mines  and  the  sub- 
marines! Fourgues  is  quite  right  —  no  man  knows 
what  he  has  in  him  till  he  gets  a  wife,  a  real  one,  and 
leaves  her.  What  a  profession  ours  is!  Life  seems  so 
beautiful  —  one  launches  into  it  like  a  ship  on  the 
sea.  But  when,  to  support  a  wife  you  adore,  you 
have  to  earn  a  living  at  the  price  of  never  being  with 
her,  it's  the  worst  of  all.  Yesterday,  at  the  station, 
she  went  and  I  was  left  on  the  platform.  She  implored 

188 


AN  ATROCIOUS  PARTING 

me  to  be  prudent,  to  save  myself  if  the  Pamir  should 
sink,  to  forget  my  amour-propre  and  that  I  was  an 
officer,  and  to  think  of  her.  I  swore!  But  you  know 
what  professional  honor  is.  I  knew  I  was  lying.  I 
knew  that  if  the  catastrophe  came,  the  sailor  would 
supplant  the  husband.  What  an  atrocious  parting! 
We  love  each  other  so  much  that  we  did  not  dare 
speak  of  it:  the  sea  was  between  us.  I  suffered  like 
one  of  the  damned.  I  wonder  if  I  did  right  to  marry 
her  during  the  war.  Later,  there  will  be  no  torpedoes 
or  submarines  —  we  could  accept  our  separation  with 
more  patience.  But  now!  Now  I  am  afraid  for  my 
skin!  My  skin  might  pass.  But  she!  My  body  goes 
away,  but  all  the  rest  stays  with  her.  And  if  I  go 
down,  what  will  be  my  last  thoughts  ?  I  shall  see  her  at 
La  Rochelle,  waiting  for  me  and  wringing  her  hands, 
and  she  will  never  know  whether  I  am  dead  or  not. 
It  is  atrocious.  Don't  marry  before  peace.  I  swore 
to  her  that  the  submarines  were  a  joke.  But  you  and 
I  know  well  that  they  are  there  —  and  everywhere  — 
and  that  we've  nothing  against  them  on  the  Pamir. 
The  people  on  land  are  sending  us  to  the  slaughter- 
house. Have  they  no  mothers,  no  wives  or  daughters 
or  sisters  —  those  who  refuse  us  guns  and  wireless? 
They  chant  about  the  glory  of  France  and  they 
strangle  Frenchmen  like  that  fellow  in  the  Bible  who 
offered  up  his  son.  The  sea  and  the  torpedoes  have 
made  me  afraid,  my  poor  friend.  I  am  afraid  — 
afraid. 


189 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

Marseilles,  November  2,  1916 
Forgive  me,  my  poor  friend,  for  my  letter  of 
day  before  yesterday.  I  was  going  through  a  crisis. 
I  hope  you  will  never  have  to  experience  anything 
similar.  But  one  comprehends  things  when  one  has 
adopted  a  second  self  for  life  and  desires  the  happi- 
ness of  that  second  self .  It 'sail  over  now.  The  Pamir 
is  taking  on  stuff  for  the  Army  of  the  Orient  and  for 
the  naval  army  which  is  at  Saloniki.  So  the  shop 
claims  me  and  calms  me.  My  wife  writes  such  pretty 
letters.  She  is  not  so  troubled  now  as  when  she  was 
here.  I'm  getting  along,  old  man.  I  went  through 
a  bad  typhoon,  but  it's  over  now.  You  must  have 
laughed  at  me.    Did  n't  you  ? 

I  read  Fourgues  and  Villiers  your  response  to  the 
battle  of  Jutland  and  the  matter  of  the  big  warships. 
It  pleased  them.  They  understood  very  well  when  you 
said  that  all  the  young  navy  knows  that  big  dread- 
noughts are  of  no  use  except  to  pass  men  up  to  the 
next  grade.   That's  plain. 

Villiers  says  that  it's  a  matter  of  psychology,  but 
that  it's  necessary  to  be  on  the  inside  to  understand 
it.  You,  who  are  on  the  inside,  explain  it  very  well. 
In  this  naval  war  there  are  the  young  who  do  the 
daily  work,  just  like  merchant  vessels,  but  they 
don't  count.  And  then  there  are  the  big  vegetables 
who  hold  together  so  that  each  may  get  his  stripe 
or  his  pay  or  decoration.  It's  very  simple,  thanks 
to  your  account  of  it.  The  Pamir  is  advised  hence- 

190 


ATTACKED  BY  A  SUBMARINE 

forth,  and  that's  all  that's  necessary  as  long  as  we 
don't  go  down! 

We  carry  flour,  shells,  guns,  —  perishable  and  non- 
perishable  material,  —  toute  la  lyre.  At  this  mo- 
ment, my  poor  friend,  my  pen  is  writing  to  you,  my 
body  is  here,  but  my  heart  is  at  La  Rochelle  and  I 
know  that  it's  all  up  with  me  now,  that  I  would  give 
the  whole  war  for  one  trip  down  there.  Of  course, 
I  wish  for  our  victory;  but  if  the  Pamir  is  ever  tor- 
pedoed and  sinks,  you  can  believe  that  I  shall  go  to 
the  bottom  cursing  eternally  all  those  whom  I  did 
not  know,  who  left  us  without  defence. 

Je  Vembrasse. 

Argostoli,  December  16,  1916 
My  Old  Pal,  — 

Going  from  Marseilles  to  Saloniki,  before 
reaching  Matapan,  the  Pamir  was  torpedoed  —  fired 
upon  and  missed  —  by  a  Boche  submarine.  At  bot- 
tom, we  should  n't  mind  being  sent  down  if  we  could 
hit  back  and  if  all  precautions  had  been  taken.  When 
a  poilu  gets  a  bullet  in  an  assault,  if  he  has  time  to 
know  about  it  before  he  dies,  he  sees  that  his  pals  are 
getting  over  and  that  gives  him  heart  to  cast  off.  But 
as  for  us,  old  man,  it's  not  our  fault  nor  that  of  the 
submarine  if  I  am  writing  you  to-day.  Some  are  un- 
lucky and  some  are  lucky,  and  that's  the  way  things 
are!  It  was  early  morning,  during  my  watch,  when 
we  began  getting  their  sugar-plums.  The  weather 
was  like  the  Last  Judgment,  and  I  was  looking  at 
191 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

the  roll  of  the  surge,  which  was  making  a  sound  like 
plouf !  on  the  stem  and  which  ran  away  covered  with 
foam.  All  of  a  sudden  there  were  columns  of  foam, 
climbing  up  and  up  like  aigrettes  on  the  port  side  at 
about  three  hundred  yards.  They  mounted  as  high 
as  our  smokestacks.  I  said,  "Hell!  We're  near  some 
rocks  and  the  sea  is  breaking  over  them!"  I  put  the 
helm  to  port  and  went  to  look  at  the  chart.  There 
were  no  more  rocks  marked  down  there  than  in  the 
white  of  my  eye.  So  I  put  back  to  the  route  after 
having  sent  word  to  Fourgues  that  there  was  some- 
thing funny  on  the  sea,  and  just  as  he  reached  the 
bridge  a  bunch  of  shells  fell  twenty  yards  to  star- 
board. There  was  no  doubt  about  it,  —  there  was 
a  submarine  squirting  at  us,  and  we  with  our  arms 
folded,  unable  to  answer  back!  But  anyway,  we 
should  have  been  at  a  loss,  for  it  was  almost  ten 
minutes  before  we  knew  from  where  or  what  they 
came.  The  Pamir  was  rolling  like  a  beast  and  there 
was  a  chop  like  a  lot  of  little  onions.  It  must  have 
been  that  which  embarrassed  the  submarine,  for  the 
shots  fell  in  front,  behind,  to  the  right,  and  to  the 
left. 

Finally,  during  a  little  calm,  we  saw  flakes  of 
smoke  three  or  four  miles  ahead  and  spray  breaking 
about  the  Boche.  Then  we  turned  our  backs  and 
cut  through  the  foam  as  fast  as  we  could.  I  could  n't 
possibly  tell  you  all  the  "thunders  and  blazes"  that 
Fourgues  let  out!  I  did  n't  count  them.  He  stamped 
and  pulled  at  his  goatee:  — 

192 


ATTACKED  BY  A  SUBMARINE 

"Do  you  see  that  devil  sending  us  prunes  while 
we  sit  here  like  eunuchs?  But  then,  if  they  had  given 
us  guns  they  would  have  been  pea-shooters  or  cock- 
tail-straws and  could  n't  have  carried  more  than 
four  or  five  thousand  yards.  Look  at  her!  She's 
at  least  seven  thousand  yards  off  and  is  missing  us 
only  because  of  the  swell.  If  it  were  calm  we  should 
be  done  for  already!" 

At  the  end  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour  we  had  counted 
about  forty  shells,  and  the  submarine  stopped  wast- 
ing her  pills  and  bore  down  on  us  at  full  speed,  and 
you  can  believe,  old  man,  that  she  gained  on  us  hand 
over  hand. 

The  Pamir,  loaded  with  about  three  thousand  five 
hundred,  was  smashed  down  into  the  trough  like 
a  piece  of  lead  and  could  n't  give  more  than  seven 
knots  if  she  broke  her  neck  and  demolished  every- 
thing on  the  deck.  The  Boche  shot  through  the  wa- 
ter like  an  anchovy.  They  must  have  closed  her 
hatches  and,  of  course,  she  did  n't  mind  the  waves 
breaking  over  her,  being  built  to  navigate  with 
water  on  all  sides.  She  must  have  gained  three  or  four 
knots  on  us,  for  after  she  'd  chased  us  for  three  quar- 
ters of  an  hour  we  saw  her  slow  up  a  bit  and  open 
the  hatches  and  there  were  the  gunners  coming  to 
fire  from  the  deck !  The  first  two  shots  fell  twenty 
yards  short  and  fifty  over.  Fourgues  said  to  himself 
that  the  third  was  going  to  hit  and  he  put  the  helm 
hard  to  starboard  at  full  speed  so  that  we  should 
swerve.  Just  at  that  moment  a  wave,  hollowed  out  like 
193 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

a  spoon,  came  along  and  shook  us  so  that  we  thought 
we  were  going  to  make  the  somersault  then  and  there. 
Everything  on  the  deck  began  to  slide  and  the  truss 
got  blocked  on  the  port  side.  There  was  no  way  of 
steering  any  more!  The  Pamir  kept  turning  around 
to  port,  only  she  could  n't  turn  fast  on  account  of  the 
heavy  sea,  but  the  submarine  doubtless  believed  that 
it  was  in  order  to  run  her  down  that  we  headed  that 
way,  so  the  Boche  gunners  scrambled  through  the 
hatches  and  shut  them  and  they  submerged  on  the 
spot.  After  that,  not  a  thing  to  be  seen!  While  our 
crew  was  hauling  the  cases  around  on  the  deck,  trying 
to  free  the  truss,  the  Pamir  went  on  around  and 
around  like  a  donkey  in  a  merry-go-round,  and 
rolled  and  pitched  without  stopping.  Then  the  sub- 
marine must  have  come  nearer,  for  we  saw  the  wakes 
of  two  torpedoes,  one  forward  at  about  thirty  yards 
and  another  which  missed  us  aft.  The  second  was 
well  aimed  and  came  straight  at  us.  We  could  move 
neither  hand  nor  foot,  nor  do  anything  but  make  the 
sign  of  the  cross  and  think  of  our  families.  But  this 
torpedo  could  n't  have  been  set  to  go  very  deep.  The 
Pamir  not  being  armored,  a  hole  at  the  water-line 
would  be  enough  to  finish  her.  Well,  the  torpedo  got 
caught  in  the  trough  of  a  hollow  wave  which  made  it 
leap  in  the  air  like  a  carp  about  a  hundred  yards  from 
us  and  fall  back  into  the  water  at  right  angles  to  its 
course.  It  passed  behind  us  while  we  all  said  ouf ! 

The  Boche  must  have  been  disgusted  at  losing  two 
torpedoes  and  nearly  fifty  shells  in  one  hour  on  a 

194 


POWERLESS  TO  HELP  THE  WORTHMINSTER 

boat  that  acted  like  a  cork.  She  came  to  the  surface 
again  at  two  or  three  thousand  yards  without  send- 
ing us  anything  more  and  pedalled  away  toward 
another  ship  coming  from  the  west,  the  Worthmin- 
ster,  a  big  English  water-bruiser  loaded  with  muni- 
tions, which  had  put  in  at  Marseilles  and  had  left 
the  same  hour  as  we,  but  which  had  fallen  behind  so 
that  we  lost  sight  of  her  the  night  before.  I  believe 
the  Worthminster  went  down.  Saloniki  was  her 
destination  and  she  did  n't  arrive  there.  We  asked 
for  news,  but  mum  is  the  word  everywhere,  and 
when  there  are  four  Thursdays  in  a  week  we  shall 
know,  perhaps,  if  our  mates  of  the  Worthminster 
are  feeding  the  crabs. 

You  can  be  sure  Fourgues  made  the  noise  of  an 
orchestra  because  the  Pamir  had  not  been  able  to 
send  a  radiogram  to  the  Worthminster,  which  had 
wireless,  as  we  had  seen  at  Marseilles.  To  see  a  sub- 
marine running  after  a  brother  and  not  to  be  able 
to  say,  "Turn  back  to  the  west  !  Shells  and  torpe- 
does are  coming!"  —  admit  that  it's  something  to 
make  one  groan  with  despair !  If  only  our  truss  had  n't 
been  stuck,  Fourgues  would  have  chased  after  the 
Boche  at  the  risk  of  getting  some  prunes,  because  the 
Worthminster  would  have  seen  that  something  was 
up  and  would  have  disappeared.  But  it  took  two 
hours  to  free  the  truss  and  repair  it  and  stop  turning 
in  circles.  So  Fourgues  followed  his  route,  signalling 
that  he  had  seen  a  Boche  submarine  near  Matapan; 
all  the  boats  we  met  bore  south.  Those  who  came 
195 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

behind  us  were  sunk,  I  suppose,  without  any  one 
being  able  to  help  it. 

At  Saloniki,  the  naval  authorities  put  a  hundred 
thousand  questions  to  Fourgues  about  the  adven- 
ture. As  the  Pamir  had  received  no  damage  in  the 
hull  or  dead-work  they  tried  to  tell  Fourgues  that  it 
was  a  pipe-dream  and  that  he  had  seen  no  more  sub- 
marine than  in  the  crook  of  his  elbow.  He  was  so 
indignant  that  he  did  n't  even  get  into  a  rage. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  said.  "If  it's  necessary  to 
let  yourself  be  sent  to  the  bottom  in  order  to  prove 
that  you  have  seen  one,  next  time  I  will  stop  and  wait 
for  that  and  then  perhaps  you  '11  believe  me.  In  any 
case  you  will  get  confirmation  from  the  Worthminster 
which—" 

They  certainly  bit  at  the  name  of  the  Worthminster 
and  that  makes  us  sure  that  she  is  lost.  But  they 
would  n't  give  any  information.  They  merely  ques- 
tioned Fourgues:  — 

"Why  did  n't  you  warn  the  Worthminster?" 

"No  wireless." 

"Why  did  n't  you  run  after  the  submarine?" 

"Truss  stuck  and  damaged." 

"Why  didn't  you  attack  the  submarine?" 

"No  guns  and  a  high  sea." 

"Why  did  n't  you  signal  the  Worthminster?" 

"  She  was  at  the  horizon  and  it  was  raining.  You 
could  n't  have  seen  a  flag  at  five  hundred  yards." 

And  so  forth  and  so  on.  Fourgues  left  abruptly, 
filing  a  written  statement,  and  saying  that  as  the  folks 

196 


MERCHANT  CAPTAINS  AT  SALONIKI 

who  are  drowned  are  blamed  and  the  landsmen  find 
fault  with  them,  he  would  wash  his  hands  of  the 
whole  business,  and  the  next  time  he  would  let  the 
submarine  go  ahead  in  order  to  settle  the  account  and 
shut  them  up.  But  that,  old  man,  was  the  bad  humor 
of  the  moment,  for  he  does  n't  want  the  Pamir  to  be 
a  landmark  on  the  bottom  any  more  than  I  do. 

While  we  were  unloading  our  stuff  for  the  Army  of 
the  Orient,  there  were  not  a  few  cargo  boats  in  the 
harbor,  and  one  day  Fourgues  invited  the  captains 
of  all  of  them  to  a  luncheon.  As  he  is  very  popular, 
we  were  a  tableful  of  about  fifteen  or  twenty,  all  fel- 
lows of  brawn  and  nerve  who  have  knocked  about 
from  north  to  south  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  with  millions  of  tons  of  merchandise  in  the  hold, 
or  any  number  of  soldiers.  It  was  a  treat  to  hear  such 
conversation  from  these  men  who  really  work  and 
who  are  n't  afraid  of  anything.  And  then,  between 
sailors  there's  no  posing.  And  Fourgues,  who  pre- 
sided, does  n't  swallow  shams  like  a  cabin-boy.  So 
each  told  his  little  story  when  his  turn  came,  without 
trying  to  stuff  anybody.  They  had  all  been  more  or 
less  attacked,  torpedoed  or  bombarded,  but  they  had 
escaped,  because  they  were  there!  They  said,  though, 
that  the  game  of  skittles  was  beginning  seriously,  and 
that  sooner  or  later  no  one  would  get  through  with- 
out some  mischance.  There  were  some  who  had  wire- 
less and  guns ;  only,  their  guns  did  n't  shoot  as  far  as 
those  of  the  submarines  which  had  attacked  them, 
and  when  they  called  for  hours  by  wireless  to  warn 
197 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

others  of  danger,  no  one  answered.  There  were  some 
with  wireless  and  no  guns,  and  as  they  had  only  one 
operator,  and  one  man  is  only  one  man  and  can't  stay 
with  the  receiver  at  his  ear  twenty-four  hours  out  of 
the  twenty-four  without  going  crazy,  their  ships  have 
not  been  informed  of  danger  and  have  sometimes 
barely  escaped.  There  were  others  who  had  guns  and 
no  wireless,  but  their  guns  were  cast-offs  which  got 
clogged  at  the  third  shot,  so  it  was  just  the  same  as 
though  they  had  n't  any.  And  then  there  were  those 
who  had  neither  guns  nor  wireless,  like  the  Pamir. 
These  were  in  the  majority  and  their  only  response 
to  a  submarine  is  to  make  their  wills.  To  talk  about 
such  a  state  of  things  is  not  exactly  merry,  and  with- 
out Fourgues,  who  was  in  fine  form  that  day,  it  might 
have  turned  into  a  regular  funeral  ceremony;  all  the 
more  so  as  they  also  spoke  of  their  lifeboats,  which 
are  insufficient  everywhere;  of  their  engines,  out  of 
breath  as  soon  as  you  start  them,  though  it's  swim 
or  sink;  of  their  ships,  which  hold  together  only  be- 
cause they  have  strong  characters,  but  which  are 
coming  unpasted  in  all  the  corners;  in  short,  old  man, 
all  the  miseries  which  you  have  known  in  the  past, 
but  which  are  nothing  but  a  joke  compared  with  the 
present  mess. 

During  coffee,  Fourgues  wound  up  by  saying  that  as 
no  one  concerned  himself  with  cargo  boats  and  trans- 
ports as  long  as  the  sailors  kept  still,  perhaps  it  was 
time  for  the  mercantile  officers  and  captains  to  say 
what  should  be  done  and  get  together  so  as  to  dis- 
.    198 


MERCHANT  CAPTAINS  AT  SALONIKI 

cuss  and  decide  on  some  line  of  action.  They  all  agreed 
and  made  a  topo,  which  they  engaged  themselves  to 
ask  their  colleagues  to  sign  wherever  they  went,  and 
also  arranged  to  send  a  delegation  to  Paris  as  soon  as 
possible.  You  can  well  believe,  old  man,  that  they 
have  n't  much  hope  of  its  coming  to  anything.  They 
will  be  told  to  go  and  let  themselves  be  sunk,  and 
that  no  one  asked  for  their  advice,  and  what  does 
it  mean  when  the  people  who  do  the  work  try  to  give 
their  opinion  about  it  ?  As  the  country  is  so  ignorant, 
and  as  it  is  being  assured  that  all  goes  well  at  sea, 
all  the  satisfaction  the  captains  will  have  will  lie  in 
thinking  they  were  right,  and  when  they  arrive  in 
port,  of  counting  up  their  little  comrades  who  have 
drunk  the  bouillon.  Amen  and  glory  be  to  those  who 
are  torpedoed! 

If  I  had  the  time  and  knew  how,  I  could  tell  you 
a  lot  of  interesting  things  about  Saloniki  that  hap- 
pened while  we  were  there:  Venizelos,  the  movement 
forward  from  the  coast  by  Monastir,  the  National 
Government,  etc.  You  may  be  sure  there  is  stir  and 
gossip!  But  I  should  need  whole  logs  to  tell  about 
it,  and  then,  outside  of  my  profession,  I  am  afraid 
of  saying  stupid  things.  Anyway,  the  Army  of  the 
Orient  was  glad  to  get  our  cargo  from  Marseilles  — 
material  for  the  railroad,  tractors,  pneumatics,  gun- 
carriages,  and  gasoline.  When  ships  are  late,  oper- 
ations are  retarded  in  proportion.  If  a  ship  is  sunk, 
they  have  to  wait  for  its  substitute  before  they  can 
go  ahead.  The  stock  must  be  replaced  in  France, 
199 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

sent  to  Marseilles,  another  boat  found  and  loaded, 
which  makes  a  month's  delay  without  counting  that 
something  is  always  missing  from  the  second  ship- 
ment, some  nothing  at  all  that  is  enough  to  keep  a  ve- 
hicle or  a  gun  or  a  railroad  from  going.  There 's  noth- 
ing of  this  at  the  front  in  France.  There,  they  have 
only  to  telephone  to  the  rear  in  order  to  get  what  they 
want.  Here,  when  you  have  n't  a  thing,  you  have  n't 
it  and  that's  all  there  is  about  it.  But  the  French 
papers  are  howling  that  they  are  letting  the  grass 
grow  under  their  feet!  I'm  only  the  mate  on  the 
Pamir,  but  I'd  rather  have  my  job  than  the  one 
Sarrail  has. 

From  Saloniki  we  went  to  Piraeus,  Salamis,  and 
all  around  there  to  deliver  spare  stores  and  supplies 
to  the  ships  of  the  navy:  screws,  boiler-tubes,  elec- 
tric cables,  torpedoes,  sheet-iron,  and  tools  —  a  regu- 
lar hardware  shop  I  We  went  from  one  anchorage  to 
another,  spitting  out  a  few  tons  here  and  a  few  there, 
and  picking  up  scraps  of  stories  about  the  ist  of  De- 
cember at  Athens,  red-hot,  all  of  them.  Don't  expect, 
though,  that  I  will  blab  any  of  it  to  you.  The  mails 
are  n't  safe.  But  it  is  n't  the  things  that  really  happen 
that  count  —  it's  what  is  said  officially.  Fourgues 
maintains  that  it's  very  philosophical:  only  the  offi- 
cial folks  have  any  interest  in  telling  lies  for  their  own 
protection  and  they  alone  believe  the  lies  they  tell. 
He  adds  that  this  war,  no  matter  where  you  turn,  is 
the  Triumph  of  the  Lie!  He  knows  how  to  say  things! 
While  the  Pamir  was  making  her  little  Odyssey  —  as 

200 


THE  USELESS  GREAT  WARSHIPS 

Villiers  called  it  —  in  the  Greek  ports,  we  three  asked 
ourselves  again  of  what  use  those  great  warships 
were,  with  their  thousands  of  crew  and  their  enor- 
mous guns.  If  it's  for  our  prestige  in  the  Orient,  one 
day  like  the  ist  of  December  can  wipe  out  the  effect 
of  a  thousand  battleships.  If  it's  for  a  naval  battle, 
then  against  whom?  The  Austrians?  In  that  case 
there 's  no  need  of  keeping  more  than  twice  as  many 
ships  as  the  Austrians  have,  and  it  would  be  better  to 
dismantle  the  other  French  ships,  which  are  devouring 
coal  and  stupefying  tens  of  thousands  of  sailors  with 
idleness  who  would  be  much  better  on  trawlers  and 
little  patrol-boats.  With  one  great  unused  hulk  they 
could  arm  ten  or  fifteen  that  would  be  of  some  use. 
If  all  they  want  is  to  give  the  Boches  targets  worth 
their  trouble  when  the  big  ships  go  to  be  keeled  in 
France  or  Bizerta  —  why  not  in  Kamchatka  ?  —  well, 
Italy  is  close  by  and  we  understand.  But  it  does  n't 
concern  me,  of  course,  and,  indeed,  I  have  enough 
with  the  Pamir  and  navigation. 

At  Argostoli,  where  they  sent  us  to  empty  our 
holds  for  the  battleships  which  were  there,  we  kept  on 
thinking  the  same  things.  Crews  and  young  officers 
bored  to  death  and  eating  their  hearts  out  in  their 
longing  for  active  service,  the  only  service  possible 
nowadays  for  marines  —  submarine-chasing  in  little 
boats!  Ah,  well,  perhaps  you  think  that  everybody 
could  n't  do  that.  So,  to  make  it  look  as  though  they 
were  doing  something,  they  keep  up  a  lot  of  drill,  as 
in  time  of  peace.  Dame!  But  what  do  you  expect? 
201 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

There  is  n't  any  war  for  them  except  that  perhaps 
they  may  be  torpedoed,  and,  of  course,  they  must 
look  as  though  they  were  of  some  use!  So  here  is 
another  French  force  lying  idle  and  one  of  prime 
quality  —  nothing  but  big,  husky  boys  who  ask  only 
to  leave  their  boats  and  go  into  danger  I  They  are  n't 
like  the  fellows  who  want  to  quit  the  trenches  in  or- 
der to  make  money  far  from  the  shells.  Sailors  would 
like  to  go  on  the  real  sea  and  just  be  paid  as  much  as 
before.  But  whether  they  want  to  or  not,  it's  all  the 
same.  Communications  are  cut  off  between  them  and 
France,  where  no  one  knows  a  thing  about  the  ma- 
rine and  cares  as  little  as  about  Siam. 

And,  say,  if  they  did  n't  fall  on  our  necks  at  Argos- 
toli  to  get  the  latest  news  from  Athens  and  the  navy, 
from  which  we  had  come,  straight!  They  know  noth- 
ing here,  or  almost  nothing.  So  at  first,  Fourgues, 
Villiers,  and  I  began  to  wind  off  what  we  knew 
with  a  free  hand,  believing  that  they  asked  questions 
in  order  to  know.  No  use,  my  friend!  All  the  chiefs 
opened  their  eyes  wide  and  then  told  us  to  go  to 
h .  France  can  let  a  hundred  men  and  six  offi- 
cers be  killed  like  rats  caught  in  a  trap,  but  no  one 
must  say  how  it  was  done.  So  Fourgues  and  the  two 
of  us  put  our  tongues  in  a  corner  with  a  quid  on  top, 
and  we  replied  to  the  young,  who  had  bits  of  the  story, 
that  we  were  not  in  a  position  to  tell  what  we  knew. 
So  there  you  have  us  in  the  role  of  censors,  old  man !  It 
fits  us  about  as  well  as  gloves  do  a  turtle!  But  as 
adventures  are  the  forming  influence  of  youth,  after 

202 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  FRENCH 

this  adventure  I  understand  the  censorship,  though  I 
never  understood  it  before.  The  censorship,  old  man, 
is  to  keep  people  from  being  nauseated  —  not  the 
people  at  the  front  or  on  the  sea,  who  could  n't  be 
any  sicker  after  the  truth  than  they  are  after  a  shell 
or  a  torpedo,  but  the  potentates  who  get  advance- 
ment or  a  reputation  through  the  war  and  who  don't 
want  you  to  put  your  nose  into  their  business.  But 
to  think  that  a  country  like  ours,  where  every  one 
lets  his  head  be  broken,  —  laughing,  —  should  be 
treated  like  that  to  cover  a  gang  that  can't  see  ahead! 
It's  enough  to  make  you  laugh  till  the  Last  Judg- 
ment! 

All  the  same,  it's  more  or  less  droll  to  see  how  the 
inhabitants  of  this  country  have  made  game  of  us 
behind  our  backs  ever  since  the  ist  of  December. 
How  are  they  going  to  be  made  to  sweat  ten  times  the 
blood  of  those  French  sailors?  There  is  no  exterior 
influence  that  holds!  They  wink  an  eye,  well  know- 
ing that  not  one  of  us  will  hurt  their  darling  Con- 
stantine.  But  French  blood  is  French  business,  and 
we  could  say  to  all  the  rest,  "Hands  off!  Let  me  settle 
this  score!"  And  then  we  should  n't  have  to  look  for 
noon  at  fourteen  o'clock  with  all  those  folks  who  ad- 
mire nothing  but  the  big  stick,  the  proof  of  which  is 
that  they  are  down  on  their  knees  with  their  mouths 
open  before  the  Boches.  But  we  keep  on  gargling 
with  the  memories  of  ancient  days,  and  all  these  Hel- 
leno-Boches,  who  are  well  aware  of  our  stupidity, 
play  the  same  violin  and  roll  up  their  eyes.  Are  we 
203 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

really  such  born  fools  as  to  be  taken  in  by  that  old 
song? 

Fourgues  explained  it  all  to  me  in  three  words,  as 
he  knows  how:  — 

"Listen  to  this,  my  boy.  There  are  adventurers, 
crooks  who  intend  to  marry  the  lady  with  the  dough. 
So  they  recite  poetry,  purse  their  lips,  and  strike  ro- 
mantic poses.  The  good  woman  lets  herself  be  taken 
in  and  goes  before  the  mayor,  her  pennies  close  be- 
hind. And  what  does  she  get  ?  He,  the  tender  heart, 
beats  her,  makes  off  with  the  money,  and  then  laughs 
at  her  to  complete  the  sum.  Well,  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment and  the  Allies  are  out  of  the  same  cask.  They 
play  us  the  orchestra  of  their  great  ancestors  The- 
mistocles  and  Kanaris,  and  when  we  come  with  our 
hand  held  out,  it's  good  for  a  hundred  massacred  sol- 
diers! If  we  kicked  them  in  return,  it  might  go.  But 
we  say,  'Let's  talk  it  over!'  So  everybody  sits  down 
in  a  circle  on  the  corpses  and  it's  French  blood  that 
makes  the  council  table!  If  instead  of  this  we  said  to 
them, ' Constantine or  bread!'  and  sealed  their  ports 
while  we  have  ships  doing  nothing,  in  a  week  we 
should  be  rid  of  those  lads  who  fire  in  our  backs,  cut 
our  bridges,  and  get  their  instructions  from  Potsdam 
every  morning.  But  what  do  you  expect,  my  boy? 
The  Frenchman  lets  himself  be  killed  and  then  says, 
'Pardon  me!'  At  least,  that's  the  doctrine!" 

Well,  old  man,  I  don't  know  just  who  Themistocles 
and  Kanaris  were,  —  old  rascals,  probably,  —  but  the 
rest  is  as  plain  as  day.  What  are  they  saying  about 

204 


A  CONSCRIPT  OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1937 

it  in  France  ?  Even  here,  only  two  days  from  Piraeus, 
there's  no  way  in  which  we  of  the  Pamir,  who  were 
there,  can  make  ourselves  heard.  From  that,  what 
must  it  be  at  home  ? 

Well,  hang  it  all!  The  Pamir  is  waiting  for  orders. 
It's  a  habit  now!  Fourgues  is  afraid  they  will  make 
us  take  coal,  seeing  that  that  commodity  is  now 
dearer  than  mutton. 

But  I  don't  give  a  whoop  nor  a  damn  nor  a  double- 
damn  !  And  if  you  are  n't  like  me,  your  stripes  have 
indeed  changed  you.    Shake. 

Norway,  February  i3, 1917 

My  dear  Old  Godfather,  — 

I  am  sure  you  are  stunned  by  the  above  form 
of  address.  However,  it's  not  so  far  wrong.  There's 
going  to  be  a  little  conscript  —  or  a  little  mamma  — 
for  the  class  of  1937  who  will  look  like  me,  I  hope,  and 
you  are  official  godfather.  Now,  no  objections!  I  heard 
about  it  only  the  other  day  on  our  arrival  in  Bergen. 
The  letter  had  been  chasing  around  after  me  for  two 
months,  but  we  have  rolled  about  so  during  that 
time  —  and  then,  too,  the  censor  held  up  the  letters  in 
Greece  —  that  it's  a  perfectly  new  future  papa  who 
sends  you  this  announcement.  If  you  don't  congratu- 
late me,  you  are  no  brother  of  mine! 

That  will  do  for  family  history.  But  you  know  such 

a  thing  does  n't  happen  every  day  in  a  man's  life. 

Don't  think  I  'm  bragging  because  there 's  going  to  be 

a  little  post-card  for  which  I  made  the  design.    No, 

205 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

old  man,  I'm  not  trying  to  crush  you.  Just  do  the 
same  when  you  can  —  and  if  you  can  —  and  we'll 
call  it  square.  And  if  you  have  the  luck  to  be  the  first 
to  see  my  little  mosquito,  embrace  the  mother  and 
the  baby  for  me.  You  know  that  I  mean  it  with  all 
my  heart. 

It's  so  long  since  I  wrote  you  last,  that  I  can't  re- 
member where  I  posted  the  letter.  I  believe  you 
were  in  the  dock  at  Bizerta  and  I  was  waiting  at  Ar- 
gostoli.  If  I  repeat  myself,  pass  over  that  part  and 
begin  where  I  left  off. 

Here  is  where  we  have  been:  Argostoli,  Messina, 
Ajaccio  (but  that  was  extra  as  you  shall  see),  Lisbon, 
Bilbao,  Brest,  Liverpool,  Bergen,  and  the  Norwegian 
ports  where  the  Pamir  is  collecting  wood.  And  we 
have  neither  moulded  at  sea  nor  in  port,  as  you  will 
also  learn.  This  time  our  work  has  been  useful,  and 
except  for  the  German  blockade  which  finds  us  in 
Norway,  everything  is  going  well.  But  I  will  do  as 
Villiers  does  when  he  argues  —  take  one  thing  at  a 
time  I 

At  Argostoli  there  were  three  other  water-bruisers 
which  left  at  the  same  time  as  the  Pamir,  or  very 
nearly,  and  we  were  supposed  to  travel  together  to 
join  a  big  cruiser  west  of  Cerigo  in  order  to  make  up 
a  convoy  with  other  boats  which  the  cruiser  had  col- 
lected at  Saloniki,  Salamina,  and  elsewhere.  There 
was  one  destroyer,  the  Revolver,  to  escort  the  lot  of 
us.  As  you  might  guess,  the  convoy  was  composed  of 
hookers,  some  of  which  made  eight  knots  and  others 

206 


UNDER  CONVOY 

fourteen,  and  as  we  all  met  in  the  night,  the  next  morn- 
ing some  were  lost  over  the  horizon  ahead  and  others 
behind.  We  patched  it  up  as  we  could  and  followed 
the  secret  route. 

Near  morning  of  the  second  day,  the  cruiser  hoisted 
a  lot  of  signals  to  tell  us  to  head  south  because  a 
submarine  had  been  travelling  on  the  secret  route 
during  the  night.  So  we  all  stampeded  for  the 
south,  the  fastest  ahead,  the  lumberers  behind,  and 
the  Pamir  well  in  the  middle.  It  was  worth  a  place  to 
see  that  hurdle  race! 

The  cruiser  had  orders  to  touch  at  Messina  or 
somewhere  along  that  coast,  but  had  neglected  to 
tell  us,  so  she  collected  us  as  well  as  she  was  able 
and  conducted  us  into  the  Strait  of  Messina,  where 
we  found  ourselves  all  in  a  bunch  about  noon.  And 
if  there  had  been  a  submarine  looking  on,  she 
could  n't  have  missed  us  any  more  than  she  could 
have  missed  an  elephant  in  a  window. 

There  the  cruiser  and  the  destroyer  signalled  good- 
bye and  gave  us  the  order  to  follow  the  route  as  far  as 
Marseilles,  where  each  should  repair  to  his  destination 
according  to  secret  orders.  But  as  there  was  no  police, 
the  fast  boats  put  on  speed,  the  others  dragged,  and 
on  arriving  before  Bonifacio,  the  Pamir  had  no  one  in 
sight  but  a  big  steamer  which  disappeared  off  the 
horizon  ahead  that  night. 

We  kept  on  all  night,  and  the  next  morning  what 
did  Fourgues  see  ?  The  same  big  steamer  disabled, 
having  received  a  torpedo  in  the  rudder  and  screw, 
207 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

and  asking  to  be  towed.  As  she  had  a  gun,  Fourgues 
thought  she  must  have  peppered  the  submarine, 
which  had  probably  run  off  to  wait  for  the  others 
who  were  coming  along  the  same  course.  The  sub- 
marine had,  perhaps,  missed  us  by  an  hour  or  an 
hour  and  a  half  at  most,  but  we  saw  nothing  of  her 
while  we  were  overhauling  the  steamer  Sainte-Eu- 
lalie,  nor  while  we  were  towing  her  into  Ajaccio.  It 
wasn't  easy  to  pass  the  tow-line,  for  there  was  a 
remnant  of  mistral  and  the  Sainte-Eulalie,  had  got 
into  the  trough.  One  of  our  men  had  his  paw  smashed 
by  the  first  hawser,  which  broke.  The  second  held, 
and  the  Pamir  towed  the  cripple  to  Ajaccio  at  five 
knots'  speed.  There  we  unloaded  our  wounded  man. 

The  convoy  being  dispersed,  there  was  no  need  to  go 
to  Marseilles,  so  Fourgues  lit  out  straight  for  Lisbon. 
At  Argostoli  they  had  told  him  to  go  there,  but  he 
permitted  himself  the  luxury  of  sailing  outside  the 
secret  route.  When  I  say  outside,  I  mean  about  fifty 
miles  off,  except  at  Gibraltar,  where,  of  course,  every- 
body has  to  pass.  But  if  the  navy  is  incapable  of 
guarding  Gibraltar,  there's  nothing  to  do  but  pull  up 
the  ladder  and  order  the  funeral  wreath. 

Fourgues  said  that  voyages  at  sea  begin  to  offer  a 
little  too  much  variety  for  him  to  follow  secret  routes, 
and  as  he  was  not  absolutely  forced  to  do  so,  he 
would  look  a  little  farther  and  avoid  submarines. 
So  he  struck  the  Spanish  coast  a  little  south  of  Ba- 
leares  and  we  hugged  the  shore  as  far  as  Lisbon. 

He  also  said  that  perhaps  it  made  him  lose  a  day, 
208 


WELL  RECEIVED  AT  LISBON 

but  that  there  is  less  danger  near  the  coast,  for  if  you 
are  torpedoed,  you  have  time  to  get  the  boat  on  shore 
and  save  it  subsequently,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  crew 
and  lifeboats  are  almost  sure  to  be  saved,  having 
only  to  make  a  few  strokes  of  the  oar  to  gain  land. 
Fourgues  added  that  this  ought  to  be  the  general 
rule. 

At  Lisbon  we  coaled,  and  the  Pamir  took  the  stuff 
the  Portuguese  navy  gave  us  for  the  expeditionary 
corps  Portugal  is  forming  in  France.  We  were  well 
received  in  Lisbon  —  not  as  in  the  other  Allied  Coun- 
tries, where  it 's  neither  fish  not  flesh.  The  Portuguese 
are  frank.  They  are  n't  rich  and  their  army  is  not 
immense,  but  they  ask  only  to  strike  at  the  Boches 
and  demolish  them,  which  ought  to  be  the  ideal  of  all 
the  Allies,  instead  of  making  shady  combinations  like 
some. 

We  filled  only  our  aft  hold  at  Lisbon  with  Portu- 
guese war  material,  going  on  to  Bilbao  to  stuff  the 
forward  hold  with  steel.  It  did  n't  take  long  at  all. 
The  Spanish  —  I  mean  the  Spanish  ship-owners  — 
have  begun  to  be  reluctant  about  shipping  us  ore; 
for  they  say  the  Boches  are  going  to  send  all  ships  to 
the  bottom  and  Spain  does  n't  want  to  lose  her  fleet. 
So  they  ask  formidable  prices  entailing  negotiations 
without  end,  while  the  ore  piles  up  on  the  docks. 
That's  why  the  Pamir  loaded  so  fast. 

I  'm  going  at  top  speed  because  I  want  to  get  to  the 
present  business  and  the  story  of  Norway,  and  the 
mail-boat  leaves  day  after  to-morrow.  We  lit  out 
209 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

for  Brest,  where  the  Pamir  left  the  Portuguese  stuff 
and  the  Spanish  metal.  During  the  passage  we  sailed 
near  a  wreck,  or  rather  fifty  wrecks,  —  wood,  billets, 
logs,  buoys,  etc.,  —  which  occupied  a  half-mile  of  the 
sea.  Fourgues  had  us  search  all  the  afternoon  to  see 
if  we  could  find  a  raft  or  the  lifeboats  of  the  broken 
ship.  But  it  must  have  been  some  such  stroke  as  the 
Suffren,  which  left  nothing  but  her  absence  as  proof 
of  shipwreck.  We  collected  nothing.  When  you  pass 
dramas  like  that  and  tell  yourself  that  your  turn  is 
coming,  perhaps  in  quarter  of  an  hour,  —  well,  you 
don't  applaud  our  naval  policy  as  they  did  recently 
in  Paris. 

When  they  had  emptied  out  our  junk  at  Brest, 
the  Pamir  waited  a  day  at  most  and  was  sent  to 
Norway  to  look  for  wood  in  the  shape  of  planks  and 
joists.  It  must  be  that  there  are  n't  so  many  boats 
left  over  now,  although  the  papers  say  that  a  thou- 
sand come  and  go  each  week  and  that  the  submarine 
war  has  proved  a  fiasco  for  the  Boches.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  they  never  minded  letting  the  Pamir 
lay  by  in  port  for  eight  or  ten  days.  But  now  — 
galop  I  All  the  other  fellows  we  have  seen  are  closing 
their  ranks  too.  It  will  go  on  as  it  can  and  then,  at 
some  given  moment,  it  will  have  to  stop.  And  then 
they'll  begin  to  tighten  by  one  notch  on  the  food  and 
coal  of  the  country,  and  then  by  two  and  three,  while 
we  shall  continue  to  be  sent  to  the  bottom.  If  this 
would  open  their  eyes  at  home  to  the  importance 
of  the  marine  and  the  need  of  giving  it  protection, 

210 


MEETING  A  MINE 

it  would  pass!  But  you'll  see  how  they'll  make  the 
people  swallow  a  new  fiction!  France  is  not  a  mari- 
time country  and  will  always  let  herself  be  deceived 
about  the  sea.  But  I  am  anticipating  and  talking  as 
though  the  Boche  blockade  had  already  been  de- 
clared at  that  time,  whereas  it  has  only  come  about 
since  we  reached  Norway. 

So  then,  we  left  Brest.  We  were  ordered  to  sail  by 
way  of  the  Irish  Channel,  an  old  acquaintance  of  ours 
since  the  war.  In  the  Manche,  about  ten  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  straight  ahead  of  the  Pamir  I  saw  a  mine 
which  must  have  become  detached  from  the  bottom 
and  which  was  drifting  like  a  mere  stick  of  wood.  If 
this  had  happened  at  night,  old  man,  I  should  not  be 
writing  you  nor  would  any  of  the  rest  on  board,  be- 
cause it  was  enough  to  blow  up  four  Pamirs  put  to- 
gether. I  swung  to  starboard.  We  looked  at  the  mine 
and  admired  it  and  that  was  all.  No  gun  to  send  it 
to  the  bottom!  No  wireless  with  which  to  inform 
the  authorities  at  Liverpool  of  the  existence  of  said 
mine! 

We  had  to  make  an  exchange  of  material  at  Birken- 
head and  anchored  in  the  Mersey.  Unfortunately, 
Fourgues  telegraphed  the  owner  that  he  was  in  Liver- 
pool, and  the  owner,  who  never  loses  a  chance  to  round 
out  his  savings-account,  answered  that  we  must  wait 
forty-eight  hours  in  order  to  take  freight  that  was 
urgently  needed  in  Norway.  This  feverishly  awaited 
freight,  old  man,  was  wagon-loads  and  mountains  of 
sugar,  preserves,  and  jams.  It  seems  that  in  Nor- 
211 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

way  they  are  n't  afraid  to  buy  things  that  are  worth 
their  weight  in  gold  in  France.  If  you  want  my 
opinion,  I  will  say  that  the  thin  Norwegians  won't  be 
getting  stout  on  that  cargo.  Farther  south  there  are 
some  mouths  open  and  we  worked  for  them.  If  one 
is  stupid  it's  for  a  long  time!  The  Allies'  blockade 
is  like  a  net  with  broken  meshes,  here  just  as  in 
Greece  and  other  places.   But  that 's  another  story. 

During  the  crossing  from  Liverpool  to  Bergen  — 
which  I  recommend  if  you  like  gymnastics,  for  we 
never  for  one  moment  ceased  rolling  from  side  to  side 
—  Villiers  amused  himself  making  calculations  ac- 
cording to  the  journal  of  navigation  to  see  how  many 
miles  the  Pamir  has  travelled  and  how  much  merchan- 
dise she  has  transported  during  the  thirty  months 
of  war.  He  found  that  we  have  made  the  tour  of  the 
globe  three  and  a  half  times  and  carried  between 
eighty  and  a  hundred  million  tons  of  stuff!  We  might 
have  exceeded  the  latter  figure  if  we  had  not  made 
so  many  voyages  in  ballast.  But,  anyway,  such  as  it 
is,  Fourgues  said  that  the  Pamir  had  done  her  bit. 
When  you  think  that  the  biggest  cargo  boats  can 
double  and  treble  that  record  and  that  France  needs 
it  all,  you  can  say  that  the  merchant  marine  has  n't 
failed  her.  Oh,  my  old  friend,  you  know  that  I  am  not 
saying  this  to  brag  and  make  out  that  we  are  wonder- 
ful fellows!  All  that  is  very  well  for  papa's  boys  who 
have  their  photographs  taken  to  put  in  the  papers  or 
for  the  old  codgers  who  spread  themselves  in  the  beer- 
rooms  at  Paris.  They  do  something  the  size  of  your 

212 


FRANCE  AND  HER  MERCHANT  MARINE 

finger-nail  and  make  it  bulk  like  the  Eiffel  Tower. 
But  we  who  trudge  up  and  down  the  earth  and  carry 
on  without  any  one  knowing  anything  about  it  and 
who  get  reprimanded  much  oftener  than  we  get  paid, 
without  counting  this  hash  of  torpedoes  and  mines,  — 
and  not  more  than  eight  days'  leave  in  port,  —  I  won- 
der what  the  Allies  would  have  done  if  we  had  n't 
been  there,  right  on  the  job  and  with  our  mouths 
shut  ?  After  this  if  the  French  people  do  not  come  to 
understand  what  the  merchant  marine  represents, 
it  is  because  they  have  been  corked  up  and  sealed  with 
strong  glue,  and  there  will  be  nothing  to  do  but  set 
all  the  boats  adrift  and  go  and  plant  artichokes  in 
our  little  villages.  Fix  it  up  any  way  you  want  to, 
France  needs  everybody  if  she  is  to  win  the  war,  and 
as  there  are  no  railroads  to  Australia  or  Argentine  or 
the  United  States,  or  to  any  of  the  countries  which 
furnish  us  with  raw  material,  her  goose  is  cooked 
without  the  merchant  marine.  Mais  va-t-on  voir 
sHls  viennent,  Jean!  There  is  no  danger  of  our  insist- 
ing on  all  this  at  Paris  and  we  shall  keep  on  just  the 
same  while  those  gentlemen  go  right  on  gargling, 
some  with  words  and  the  others  with  the  bank-notes 
that  are  bursting  their  pockets. 

At  Bergen  we  emptied  out  the  grub  destined  for  the 
Boches,  and  I  assure  you  that  our  men  smashed  just 
as  many  cases  as  possible,  firing  them  out  onto  the 
dock.  The  owner  will  lose  nothing  by  it,  though,  for 
you  may  be  perfectly  sure  that  he  took  all  precau- 
tions; but  at  least  it  makes  a  little  less  for  the  Boches 
213 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

to  cram  away  in  their  insides.  And  while  the  Pamir 
was  in  Bergen,  news  came  of  the  submarine  war  which 
the  Boches  are  going  to  carry  on  without  mercy  — 
blockade,  forbidden  zones,  no  warnings,  and  the  rest 
of  the  catalogue.  Of  course,  nobody  on  the  Pamir  was 
really  surprised  by  this  story  which  makes  all  the 
Allied  big-bugs  and  the  journals  scream  so  loudly. 
We  and  all  the  fellows  who  blow  around  at  sea,  and 
hear  the  talk  everywhere,  have  felt  the  squall  coming 
for  ever  so  long.  Only,  as  we  aren't  officials,  of 
course  we  must  have  been  mistaken !  Well,  the  bomb 
has  burst!  Who  is  going  to  suffer?  First,  the  little 
boats  that  go  to  sea;  and  then  France,  who  will  have 
to  draw  in  her  belt.  What  will  they  stand  for  at  home 
in  the  way  of  high  prices  for  coal,  flour,  butter,  and 
the  rest  ? 

We  who  are  used  to  transporting  all  that  sort  of 
thing  know  what  such  a  catastrophe  means.  But  the 
dear  public  that  buys  at  the  corner  grocery,  and  be- 
lieves those  things  come  there  of  themselves  like  the 
rain  and  the  air  they  breathe,  will  be  somewhat  an- 
noyed. Of  course,  they  won't  be  told  how  it  came 
about,  and  they  won't  know  they  are  paying  double 
or  treble  the  former  prices  because  ships  go  down  at 
sea.  As  usual,  they  will  be  served  a  lot  of  soapsuds 
because  it's  forbidden  to  give  the  real  reason  for  any- 
thing. 

All  the  same,  the  censor  can't  prohibit  the  cutting- 
off  of  the  gas,  the  electricity,  the  railroads,  the  res- 
taurants, and  ever/thing  that  makes  life  easy.    For 

£14 


THINGS  BOILING  IN  RUSSIA 

you  may  be  sure  the  Boches  aren't  going  to  do 
this  with  the  back  of  the  spoon.  Here,  so  near  them, 
people  have  information,  and  we  have  picked  up  a 
good  deal  at  Bergen  and  Christiansund,  where  I  am 
writing  while  our  planks  and  joists  are  being  loaded. 
It's  a  good  thing  that  the  Pamir  came  here  to  get  the 
wood,  for  all  the  Norwegian  boats  have  orders  to  stay 
wherever  they  are  without  stirring,  on  account  of  the 
blockade,  and  I  beg  you  to  believe  there  are  millions 
of  tons  of  building  timber  held  up.  What's  going  to 
be  done  ?  It  was  short  already!  The  worst  is  that  the 
Dutch,  the  Spanish,  and  the  other  neutrals  are  also  go- 
ing to  suspend  their  traffic  because  they  are  n't  keen 
either  about  losing  their  ships.  Well,  the  Pamir  will 
have  from  three  thousand  to  thirty-two  hundred  tons 
of  wood  which  will  serve  to  construct  the  barracks  of 
the  poilus,  the  railroads,  and  the  uprights  for  the 
trenches  of  at  least  one  army  corps.  This  is  at  least 
as  useful  as  shells  and  coal  and  we  are  pleased  with 
our  cargo. 

To  return  to  the  information  we  have  gathered 
here,  it  seems  that  things  are  boiling  in  Russia.  A  lot 
of  people  think  that  at  Petrograd  and  other  places 
up  there  it's  bad  enough  to  make  them  submit  to 
German  influence.  The  Germans  are  putting  sticks 
in  their  wheels  even  at  court  and  in  the  imperial 
family  itself.  Some  say  that  it  can  end  only  by  a 
separate  peace  or  a  revolution.  In  fact,  matters 
look  pretty  dark  in  the  opinion  of  those  who  have 
been  there. 

215 


THE  ODYSSEY  OF  A  TORPEDOED  TRANSPORT 

In  Germany  they  talk  of  nothing  but  the  subma- 
rines, and  the  public  expect  wonders.  The  Norwe- 
gians say  that  the  Germans  have  been  turning  out 
several  submarines  a  week  for  the  last  few  months 
and  that  there  are  many  mine-sowers  among  them. 
So,  as  you  can  believe  the  Boches  will  keep  their 
word,  navigation  is  going  to  be  a  matter  of  wolf-traps 
and  we  shall  be  blown  up  without  knowing  why  or 
how.  The  Pamir  is  nicely  fixed  for  the  first  voyage 
after  the  blockade.  She  has  to  sail  the  entire  length 
of  the  forbidden  zone  and  our  sort  of  patrol  will  be 
little  protection.  That  has  not  changed  at  all  in 
thirty  months  of  war!  But  Fourgues  says  the  Allies 
are  rich  enough  to  pretend  that  they  can  stand  for 
it.  Let  a  thousand  or  five  thousand  tons  be  sunk  and 
still  they  will  state  in  the  papers  that  it's  a  bluff,  he 
says.  But  in  the  end  the  public  will  pay.  Whether 
we  get  through  or  not  is  of  no  importance  at  all.  All 
that  we  shall  have  for  our  funeral  oration  will  be 
silence  everywhere. 

But  this  is  nonsense.  I  am  going  to  the  movies 
to-night  with  Villiers,  who  is  giving  me  a  party  in 
honor  of  my  paternity.  We  shall  dine  on  shore. 
In  three  days  we  shall  get  under  way  for  an  Atlan- 
tic port  which  is  not  yet  fixed.  What  luck  if  it  were 
La  Rochelle  or  Saint-Nazaire!  I  could  go  and  em- 
brace the  little  mother.  Bah!  Who  lives,  learns! 
Sailors  were  not  meant  to  be  with  their  families,  and 
as  the  proverb  says,  "Sailor's  bride,  sorrow's  bride!" 
I  am  sending  you  my  photograph,  which  I  had  taken 

216 


GERMAN  NEWS  OF  THE  PAMIR 

at  Bergen  and  which  I  am  also  sending  to  my  wife 
so  that  she  can  look  at  me  while  she  is  waiting  for  the 
baby.  You  will  see  that  I  am  well  and  that  the  war 
agrees  with  me.  You  know  that  I  mean  what  I  have 
written  on  the  photo.  You  are  my  old  brother  and 
here's  till  we  meet  again. 

* 
*      * 

Official  Statement  (end  of  February,  191 7) 
We  are  without  news  of  the  Pamir,  which  the  German 
radiograms  describe  as  torpedoed. 


THE    END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S    .   A 


